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http://www.alternet.org/gender/nashville-prosecutors-have-made-sterilization-women-part-plea-deals-least-4-times-last-5Nashville Prosecutors Have Made Sterilization of Women Part of Plea Deals—Recentlyhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/88010502/0/alternet~Nashville-Prosecutors-Have-Made-Sterilization-of-Women-Part-of-Plea-Deals%e2%80%94Recently

Many suggest that the practice happens more frequently than you think.

Nashville’s district attorney recently banned his staff from using invasive surgery as a bargaining chip, after it became apparent that local attorneys had been using sterilization as part of plea bargains.

In the most recent case, a woman with a long history of mental illness was charged with neglect after her young baby died. Her defense attorney refused to go forward with a plea unless she agreed to be sterilized. The 26-year-old Jasmine Randers suffers from paranoia and had fled from a Minnesota treatment facility where she was under state commitment.

The cause of Randers’ baby’s death could not be determined. A cab driver, that drove her to a hotel the night before she brought the baby to a hospital, claims that the baby was screaming but stopped completely during the ride. Prosecutors speculated that the child could have suffocated in Randers’ coat during the cab ride, died as a result of unexplained infant death syndrome, or been accidentally crushed to death by Randers while she slept. According to an investigation, by The Tennessean, the child was healthy and there were no signs of traumatic injury.

Nonetheless, Randers was hit with a neglect charge that carried a sentence of 15-25 years behind bars. The charge stemmed from the fact that no bottles of formula were found in the hotel, the fact she took taxi to the hospital instead of an ambulance, and the amount of time it took her to notify anyone about the baby’s death. The Tennessean report quotes Randers as saying, “I believe I was very sick and I, I guess, she was very sick, and I came here without a lot of money. And she ended up dying prior to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. Ever since then we've been trying to figure out how much I was responsible for that."

The case was picked up by Assistant District Attorney Brian Holmgren and Assistant Public Defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe. Holmgren wouldn’t hear of a plea deal unless Randers’ tubes were tied. Harcombe viewed the stipulation as tremendously coercive, so she went over his head to Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk and explained the situation. Funk has now cracked down on the practice, declaring, “I have let my office know that that is not an appropriate condition of a plea. It is now policy that sterilization will never be a condition of deal-making in the district attorney's office."

However, defense attorneys say the practice has been implemented at least three other times in recent years. In fact, it’s not even the first time Holmgren has attempted to use it. He has admitted to requesting it from a client who refused, thereby torpedoing her plea deal. According to an Associated Pressstory on the subject, Nashville defense attorney Carrie Searcy says that Holmgren asked two of her clients to undergo the surgery.

The AP story also identifies cases from West Virginia and Virginia where sterilization has been used to reduce prison time. The extent of the practice, which many assume belongs to a bygone era in American history, remains unknown.

Many suggest that the practice happens more frequently than you think.

Nashville’s district attorney recently banned his staff from using invasive surgery as a bargaining chip, after it became apparent that local attorneys had been using sterilization as part of plea bargains.

In the most recent case, a woman with a long history of mental illness was charged with neglect after her young baby died. Her defense attorney refused to go forward with a plea unless she agreed to be sterilized. The 26-year-old Jasmine Randers suffers from paranoia and had fled from a Minnesota treatment facility where she was under state commitment.

The cause of Randers’ baby’s death could not be determined. A cab driver, that drove her to a hotel the night before she brought the baby to a hospital, claims that the baby was screaming but stopped completely during the ride. Prosecutors speculated that the child could have suffocated in Randers’ coat during the cab ride, died as a result of unexplained infant death syndrome, or been accidentally crushed to death by Randers while she slept. According to an investigation, by The Tennessean, the child was healthy and there were no signs of traumatic injury.

Nonetheless, Randers was hit with a neglect charge that carried a sentence of 15-25 years behind bars. The charge stemmed from the fact that no bottles of formula were found in the hotel, the fact she took taxi to the hospital instead of an ambulance, and the amount of time it took her to notify anyone about the baby’s death. The Tennessean report quotes Randers as saying, “I believe I was very sick and I, I guess, she was very sick, and I came here without a lot of money. And she ended up dying prior to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. Ever since then we've been trying to figure out how much I was responsible for that."

The case was picked up by Assistant District Attorney Brian Holmgren and Assistant Public Defender Mary Kathryn Harcombe. Holmgren wouldn’t hear of a plea deal unless Randers’ tubes were tied. Harcombe viewed the stipulation as tremendously coercive, so she went over his head to Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk and explained the situation. Funk has now cracked down on the practice, declaring, “I have let my office know that that is not an appropriate condition of a plea. It is now policy that sterilization will never be a condition of deal-making in the district attorney's office."

However, defense attorneys say the practice has been implemented at least three other times in recent years. In fact, it’s not even the first time Holmgren has attempted to use it. He has admitted to requesting it from a client who refused, thereby torpedoing her plea deal. According to an Associated Pressstory on the subject, Nashville defense attorney Carrie Searcy says that Holmgren asked two of her clients to undergo the surgery.

The AP story also identifies cases from West Virginia and Virginia where sterilization has been used to reduce prison time. The extent of the practice, which many assume belongs to a bygone era in American history, remains unknown.

The deaths of Jackson and Schweich have sparked outrage in Missouri. In the final days of his life, Schweich was subject to both an overt and covert campaign attacking him personally, including rumors that he was Jewish (he did have Jewish lineage on his grandfather's side but was a practicing Episcopalian).

In his eulogy for Schweich, former Missouri Senator John Danforth issued a strong rebuke of the campaigns waged against the former state auditor, saying, “Words do hurt. Words can kill. That has been proven right here in our home state.”

In the days leading up to Schweich's suicide, he alleged that the state's GOP chairman, John Hancock, was telling people he was Jewish.

“Until recently, I mistakenly believed that Tom Schweich was Jewish, but it was simply a part of what I believed to be his biography,” Hancock reportedly emailed to his party's central committee (he did not attend Schweich's funeral). Hancock did not explain why Schweich's faith was relevant.

It wasn't an explanation that Danforth bought. “Someone said this was no different than saying a person is Presbyterian. Here's how to test the credibility of that remark: When was the last time anyone sidled up to you and whispered into your ear that such and such a person is a Presbyterian?”

In addition to a whisper campaign against Schweich's faith, his intended campaign for governor of Missouri made him the target of political rivals who already began hitting him with paid advertisements. In one radio ad, composed by Ted Cruz adviser Jeff Roe's Axiom Strategies, he was called a “little bug” and compared to the television character Barney Fife due to his physical build.

AlterNet called Axiom Strategies and requested Roe's comment about both suicides. We were told that Roe has not answered any media requests on this topic. As of this writing, the Cruz campaign has not gotten back to us with a comment.

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Cruz said he was “not going to engage in the personal mudslinging, in the negative attacks on people's character.” If that were true, why would he hire someone who played a role in such a brutal smear campaign?

The deaths of Jackson and Schweich have sparked outrage in Missouri. In the final days of his life, Schweich was subject to both an overt and covert campaign attacking him personally, including rumors that he was Jewish (he did have Jewish lineage on his grandfather's side but was a practicing Episcopalian).

In his eulogy for Schweich, former Missouri Senator John Danforth issued a strong rebuke of the campaigns waged against the former state auditor, saying, “Words do hurt. Words can kill. That has been proven right here in our home state.”

In the days leading up to Schweich's suicide, he alleged that the state's GOP chairman, John Hancock, was telling people he was Jewish.

“Until recently, I mistakenly believed that Tom Schweich was Jewish, but it was simply a part of what I believed to be his biography,” Hancock reportedly emailed to his party's central committee (he did not attend Schweich's funeral). Hancock did not explain why Schweich's faith was relevant.

It wasn't an explanation that Danforth bought. “Someone said this was no different than saying a person is Presbyterian. Here's how to test the credibility of that remark: When was the last time anyone sidled up to you and whispered into your ear that such and such a person is a Presbyterian?”

In addition to a whisper campaign against Schweich's faith, his intended campaign for governor of Missouri made him the target of political rivals who already began hitting him with paid advertisements. In one radio ad, composed by Ted Cruz adviser Jeff Roe's Axiom Strategies, he was called a “little bug” and compared to the television character Barney Fife due to his physical build.

AlterNet called Axiom Strategies and requested Roe's comment about both suicides. We were told that Roe has not answered any media requests on this topic. As of this writing, the Cruz campaign has not gotten back to us with a comment.

In an interview with CNN yesterday, Cruz said he was “not going to engage in the personal mudslinging, in the negative attacks on people's character.” If that were true, why would he hire someone who played a role in such a brutal smear campaign?

Ever wonder why we waited six years to get a decent economic recovery? This new revelation will disgust you.

Barney Frank has a new autobiography out. He’s long been one of the nation’s most quotable politicians. And Washington lives in perpetual longing for intra-party conflict.

So why has a critical revelation from Frank’s book, one that implicates the most powerful Democrat in the nation, been entirely expunged from the record? The media has thus far focused on Frank’s wrestling with being a closeted gay congressman, or his comment that Joe Biden “can’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.” But nobody has focused on Frank’s allegation that Barack Obama refused to extract foreclosure relief from the nation’s largest banks, as a condition for their receipt of hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.

The anecdote comes on page 295 of “Frank,” a title that the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee holds true to throughout the book. The TARP legislation included specific instructions to use a section of the funds to prevent foreclosures. Without that language, TARP would not have passed; Democratic lawmakers who helped defeat TARP on its first vote cited the foreclosure mitigation piece as key to their eventual reconsideration.

TARP was doled out in two tranches of $350 billion each. The Bush administration, still in charge during TARP’s passage in October 2008, used none of the first tranche on mortgage relief, nor did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson use any leverage over firms receiving the money to persuade them to lower mortgage balances and prevent foreclosures. Frank made his anger clear over this ignoring of Congress’ intentions at a hearing with Paulson that November. Paulson argued in his defense, “the imminent threat of financial collapse required him to focus single-mindedly on the immediate survival of financial institutions, no matter how worthy other goals were.”

Whether or not you believe that sky-is-falling narrative, Frank kept pushing for action on foreclosures, which by the end of 2008 threatened one in 10 homes in America. With the first tranche of TARP funds running out by the end of the year, Frank writes, “Paulson agreed to include homeowner relief in his upcoming request for a second tranche of TARP funding. But there was one condition: He would only do it if the President-elect asked him to.”

Frank goes on to explain that Obama rejected the request, saying “we have only one president at a time.” Frank writes, “my frustrated response was that he had overstated the number of presidents currently on duty,” which equally angered both the outgoing and incoming officeholders.

Obama’s unwillingness to take responsibility before holding full authority doesn’t match other decisions made at that time. We know from David Axelrod’s book that the Obama transition did urge the Bush administration to provide TARP loans to GM and Chrysler to keep them in business. So it was OK to help auto companies prior to Inauguration Day, just not homeowners.

In the end, the Obama transition wrote a letter promising to get to the foreclosure relief later, if Congress would only pass the second tranche of TARP funds. Congress fulfilled its obligation, and the Administration didn’t. The promised foreclosure mitigation efforts failed to help, and in many cases abjectly hurt homeowners.

This is not a new charge from Frank: he first leveled it in May 2012 in an interview with New York magazine. Nobody in the Obama Administration has ever denied the anecdote, but of course hardly anybody bothered to publicize it, save for a couple financial blogs. I suppose those reviewing ”Frank” can offer an excuse about this being “old news,” but that claims suffers from the “tree falling in the forest” syndrome: if a revelation is made in public, and no journalist ever elevates it, did it make a sound?

The political media’s allergy to policy is a clear culprit here. Jamie Kirchick’s blanket statement in his review of “Frank” that “readers’ eyes will glaze over” at the recounting of the financial crisis is a typical attitude. But millions of people suffered needlessly for Wall Street’s sins; they’d perhaps be interested in understanding why.

That’s the main reason why the significance of Obama’s decision cannot be overstated. The fact that we waited six years to get some semblance of a decent economic recovery traces back directly to the failure to alleviate the foreclosure crisis. Here was a moment, right near the beginning, when both public money and leverage could have been employed to stop foreclosures. Instead of demanding homeowner help when financial institutions relied on massive government support, the Administration passed, instead prioritizing nursing banks back to health and then asking them to give homeowners a break, which the banks predictably declined.

There were no structural or legislative barriers to this proposition. One man, Barack Obama, could tell another man, Henry Paulson, to tighten the screws on banks to write down loans, and something would have happened. Would it have been successful? Would it have saved tens or hundreds of billions in damage to homeowners? Even trillions? Or would Paulson and his predecessors found a way to wriggle out of the commitment again? We know the alternative failed, so it’s tantalizing to think about this road not taken.

This still matters because, as City University of New York professor Alan White explained brilliantly over the weekend, the foreclosure crisis isn’t really over. Though 6 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007, another 1 million remain in the pipeline, many of them legacy loans originated during the housing bubble. If you properly compare the situation to a time before the widespread issuance of subprime mortgages, we’re still well above normal levels of foreclosure starts.

In addition, over one in six homes remain underwater, where the mortgage is bigger than the value of the home, a dangerous situation if we hit another economic downturn. And up to 4 million homes face interest rate resets from temporary modifications, along with nontraditional mortgages where the rate is scheduled to go up. Home equity lines of credit are also nearing their 10-year limits, requiring borrowers to pay down principal balances. Some Americans have been waiting over five years in foreclosure limbo, which sounds great (no payments!) until you understand the stress and anxiety associated with not knowing if you will get thrown out on the street at any time, something highly correlated with sickness and even suicides.

In baseball terms, we’re in the seventh or eighth inning of the crisis. And Barney Frank detailed how the president-elect had the opportunity to call the game and fix the problem much earlier, which he turned down. You’d think someone would have noticed.

Ever wonder why we waited six years to get a decent economic recovery? This new revelation will disgust you.

Barney Frank has a new autobiography out. He’s long been one of the nation’s most quotable politicians. And Washington lives in perpetual longing for intra-party conflict.

So why has a critical revelation from Frank’s book, one that implicates the most powerful Democrat in the nation, been entirely expunged from the record? The media has thus far focused on Frank’s wrestling with being a closeted gay congressman, or his comment that Joe Biden “can’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.” But nobody has focused on Frank’s allegation that Barack Obama refused to extract foreclosure relief from the nation’s largest banks, as a condition for their receipt of hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout money.

The anecdote comes on page 295 of “Frank,” a title that the former chair of the House Financial Services Committee holds true to throughout the book. The TARP legislation included specific instructions to use a section of the funds to prevent foreclosures. Without that language, TARP would not have passed; Democratic lawmakers who helped defeat TARP on its first vote cited the foreclosure mitigation piece as key to their eventual reconsideration.

TARP was doled out in two tranches of $350 billion each. The Bush administration, still in charge during TARP’s passage in October 2008, used none of the first tranche on mortgage relief, nor did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson use any leverage over firms receiving the money to persuade them to lower mortgage balances and prevent foreclosures. Frank made his anger clear over this ignoring of Congress’ intentions at a hearing with Paulson that November. Paulson argued in his defense, “the imminent threat of financial collapse required him to focus single-mindedly on the immediate survival of financial institutions, no matter how worthy other goals were.”

Whether or not you believe that sky-is-falling narrative, Frank kept pushing for action on foreclosures, which by the end of 2008 threatened one in 10 homes in America. With the first tranche of TARP funds running out by the end of the year, Frank writes, “Paulson agreed to include homeowner relief in his upcoming request for a second tranche of TARP funding. But there was one condition: He would only do it if the President-elect asked him to.”

Frank goes on to explain that Obama rejected the request, saying “we have only one president at a time.” Frank writes, “my frustrated response was that he had overstated the number of presidents currently on duty,” which equally angered both the outgoing and incoming officeholders.

Obama’s unwillingness to take responsibility before holding full authority doesn’t match other decisions made at that time. We know from David Axelrod’s book that the Obama transition did urge the Bush administration to provide TARP loans to GM and Chrysler to keep them in business. So it was OK to help auto companies prior to Inauguration Day, just not homeowners.

In the end, the Obama transition wrote a letter promising to get to the foreclosure relief later, if Congress would only pass the second tranche of TARP funds. Congress fulfilled its obligation, and the Administration didn’t. The promised foreclosure mitigation efforts failed to help, and in many cases abjectly hurt homeowners.

This is not a new charge from Frank: he first leveled it in May 2012 in an interview with New York magazine. Nobody in the Obama Administration has ever denied the anecdote, but of course hardly anybody bothered to publicize it, save for a couple financial blogs. I suppose those reviewing ”Frank” can offer an excuse about this being “old news,” but that claims suffers from the “tree falling in the forest” syndrome: if a revelation is made in public, and no journalist ever elevates it, did it make a sound?

The political media’s allergy to policy is a clear culprit here. Jamie Kirchick’s blanket statement in his review of “Frank” that “readers’ eyes will glaze over” at the recounting of the financial crisis is a typical attitude. But millions of people suffered needlessly for Wall Street’s sins; they’d perhaps be interested in understanding why.

That’s the main reason why the significance of Obama’s decision cannot be overstated. The fact that we waited six years to get some semblance of a decent economic recovery traces back directly to the failure to alleviate the foreclosure crisis. Here was a moment, right near the beginning, when both public money and leverage could have been employed to stop foreclosures. Instead of demanding homeowner help when financial institutions relied on massive government support, the Administration passed, instead prioritizing nursing banks back to health and then asking them to give homeowners a break, which the banks predictably declined.

There were no structural or legislative barriers to this proposition. One man, Barack Obama, could tell another man, Henry Paulson, to tighten the screws on banks to write down loans, and something would have happened. Would it have been successful? Would it have saved tens or hundreds of billions in damage to homeowners? Even trillions? Or would Paulson and his predecessors found a way to wriggle out of the commitment again? We know the alternative failed, so it’s tantalizing to think about this road not taken.

This still matters because, as City University of New York professor Alan White explained brilliantly over the weekend, the foreclosure crisis isn’t really over. Though 6 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2007, another 1 million remain in the pipeline, many of them legacy loans originated during the housing bubble. If you properly compare the situation to a time before the widespread issuance of subprime mortgages, we’re still well above normal levels of foreclosure starts.

In addition, over one in six homes remain underwater, where the mortgage is bigger than the value of the home, a dangerous situation if we hit another economic downturn. And up to 4 million homes face interest rate resets from temporary modifications, along with nontraditional mortgages where the rate is scheduled to go up. Home equity lines of credit are also nearing their 10-year limits, requiring borrowers to pay down principal balances. Some Americans have been waiting over five years in foreclosure limbo, which sounds great (no payments!) until you understand the stress and anxiety associated with not knowing if you will get thrown out on the street at any time, something highly correlated with sickness and even suicides.

In baseball terms, we’re in the seventh or eighth inning of the crisis. And Barney Frank detailed how the president-elect had the opportunity to call the game and fix the problem much earlier, which he turned down. You’d think someone would have noticed.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/economy/robert-reich-rich-dont-work-anymore-working-poor-peopleRobert Reich: The Rich Don't Work Anymore—Working Is for Poor Peoplehttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/88004487/0/alternet~Robert-Reich-The-Rich-Dont-Work-Anymore%e2%80%94Working-Is-for-Poor-People

A large portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat.

Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”

In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week – yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.

In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.

The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich – is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.

Why are these two groups growing?

The ranks of the working poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, elder care, and other personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum wage.

At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower today than it was a quarter century ago.

In addition, most recipients of public assistance must now work in order to qualify.

Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996 pushed the poor off welfare and into work. Meanwhile, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage subsidy, has emerged as the nation’s largest anti-poverty program. Here, too, having a job is a prerequisite.

The new work requirements haven’t reduced the number or percentage of Americans in poverty. They’ve just moved poor people from being unemployed and impoverished to being employed and impoverished.

While poverty declined in the early years of welfare reform when the economy boomed and jobs were plentiful, it began growing in 2000. By 2012 it exceeded its level in 1996, when welfare ended.

At the same time, the ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs.

Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.

Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand children.

The nation is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.

As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.

The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.

The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich – has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).

If the owners of capital assets whose worth increases over their lifetime hold them until death, their heirs pay zero capital gainstaxes on them. Such “unrealized” gains now account for more than half the value of assets held by estates worth more than $100 million.

At the same time, the estate tax has been slashed. Before George W. Bush was president, it applied to assets in excess of $2 million per couple at a rate of 55 percent. Now it kicks in at $10,680,000 per couple, at a 40 percent rate.

Republicans now in control of Congress want to go even further. Last Friday the Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a non-binding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. Earlier in the week, the House Ways and Means Committee also voted for a repeal. The House is expected to vote in coming weeks.

Yet the specter of an entire generation doing nothing for their money other than speed-dialing their wealth management advisers is not particularly attractive.

It puts more and more responsibility for investing a substantial portion of the nation’s assets into the hands of people who have never worked.

It also endangers our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably and invariably accumulates political influence and power.

Consider the rise of both the working poor and the non-working rich, and the meritocratic ideal on which America’s growing inequality is often justified doesn’t hold up.

That widening inequality — combined with the increasing numbers of people who work full time but are still impoverished and of others who have never worked and are fabulously wealthy — is undermining the moral foundations of American capitalism.

Many believe that poor people deserve to be poor because they’re lazy. As Speaker John Boehner has said, the poor have a notion that “I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this. I think I’d rather just sit around.”

In reality, a large and growing share of the nation’s poor work full time — sometimes sixty or more hours a week – yet still don’t earn enough to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

It’s also commonly believed, especially among Republicans, that the rich deserve their wealth because they work harder than others.

In reality, a large and growing portion of the super-rich have never broken a sweat. Their wealth has been handed to them.

The rise of these two groups — the working poor and non-working rich – is relatively new. Both are challenging the core American assumptions that people are paid what they’re worth, and work is justly rewarded.

Why are these two groups growing?

The ranks of the working poor are growing because wages at the bottom have dropped, adjusted for inflation. With increasing numbers of Americans taking low-paying jobs in retail sales, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, childcare, elder care, and other personal services, the pay of the bottom fifth is falling closer to the minimum wage.

At the same time, the real value of the federal minimum wage is lower today than it was a quarter century ago.

In addition, most recipients of public assistance must now work in order to qualify.

Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996 pushed the poor off welfare and into work. Meanwhile, the Earned Income Tax Credit, a wage subsidy, has emerged as the nation’s largest anti-poverty program. Here, too, having a job is a prerequisite.

The new work requirements haven’t reduced the number or percentage of Americans in poverty. They’ve just moved poor people from being unemployed and impoverished to being employed and impoverished.

While poverty declined in the early years of welfare reform when the economy boomed and jobs were plentiful, it began growing in 2000. By 2012 it exceeded its level in 1996, when welfare ended.

At the same time, the ranks of the non-working rich have been swelling. America’s legendary “self-made” men and women are fast being replaced by wealthy heirs.

Six of today’s ten wealthiest Americans are heirs to prominent fortunes. The Walmart heirs alone have more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined.

Americans who became enormously wealthy over the last three decades are now busily transferring that wealth to their children and grand children.

The nation is on the cusp of the largest inter-generational transfer of wealth in history. A study from the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy projects a total of $59 trillion passed down to heirs between 2007 and 2061.

As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.

The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.

The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich – has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).

If the owners of capital assets whose worth increases over their lifetime hold them until death, their heirs pay zero capital gainstaxes on them. Such “unrealized” gains now account for more than half the value of assets held by estates worth more than $100 million.

At the same time, the estate tax has been slashed. Before George W. Bush was president, it applied to assets in excess of $2 million per couple at a rate of 55 percent. Now it kicks in at $10,680,000 per couple, at a 40 percent rate.

Republicans now in control of Congress want to go even further. Last Friday the Senate voted 54-46 in favor of a non-binding resolution to repeal the estate tax altogether. Earlier in the week, the House Ways and Means Committee also voted for a repeal. The House is expected to vote in coming weeks.

Yet the specter of an entire generation doing nothing for their money other than speed-dialing their wealth management advisers is not particularly attractive.

It puts more and more responsibility for investing a substantial portion of the nation’s assets into the hands of people who have never worked.

It also endangers our democracy, as dynastic wealth inevitably and invariably accumulates political influence and power.

Consider the rise of both the working poor and the non-working rich, and the meritocratic ideal on which America’s growing inequality is often justified doesn’t hold up.

That widening inequality — combined with the increasing numbers of people who work full time but are still impoverished and of others who have never worked and are fabulously wealthy — is undermining the moral foundations of American capitalism.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/7-biggest-reasons-america-screwed7 of the Biggest Reasons America Is Screwedhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87986622/0/alternet~of-the-Biggest-Reasons-America-Is-Screwed

Why the wealthy and the right always prevail.

Our current political situation is unprecedented. The vast majority of Americans keep falling behind economically because of changes in society's ground rules, while the rich get even richer -- yet this situation doesn't translate into a winning politics.

If anything, the right keeps gaining and the wealthy keep pulling away. How can this possibly be?

Let me suggest seven reasons:

Reason One. The Discrediting of Politics Itself. The Republican Party has devised a strategy of hamstringing government and making any remediation impossible.

Instead of the voters punishing Republicans, the result is cynicism and passivity, so the Republican strategy is vindicated and rewarded.

The media plays into this pattern by adopting a misleading narrative that makes the gridlock in Washington roughly the equal fault of both parties -- with lazy phrases such as "Washington is broken," or "politics is broken," or "partisan bickering." (Do a Google search of those clichés. It will make you sick.)

Eminent political scientists such as Jacob Hacker (Off-Center) and Thomas E. Mann and co-author Norman Ornstein, a self-described Republican (It's Even Worse Than It Looks) have thoroughly debunked the premise of symmetrical blame. It's Republicans who are the blockers. But these scholars and their evidence fail to alter the media storyline, and the damage has been done.

The very people who have given up on politics, and on Democrats as stewards of a social compact that helps regular working people, are precisely those regular working people -- who see the Dream getting away from them and government not helping.

Reason Two. Compromised Democrats. But the Democrats are hardly blameless. Instead of seizing on the collapse of 2008 as a disgrace for laissez-faire economics, deregulation, Wall Street and the Republican Party, Barack Obama tried to make nice with the GOP, refrained from cleaning out the big banks that caused the mess, and drank the Kool-Aid of budget balance.

The result: working people frustrated with economic backsliding had no party that really championed their interests. The fateful year 2008 may have been the worst missed moment for revolutionary reform in the history of the Republic -- and depending on who gets the Democratic nomination next time and what she does with it, 2016 could rival 2008 as a lost opportunity.

Republicans made big gains in the off-year elections of 2010 and 2014. Skeptical or cynical voters on the Democratic side (young people, poor people, African Americans, single women) are less likely to vote in off-years, while the rightwing base stays ferociously engaged. The more that potentially Democratic voters are disaffected, the more the Right can block any progress on inequality.

Reason Three. The Reign of Politicized Courts and Big Money. The Supreme Court's usual majority has become an opportunistic subsidiary of the Republican Party. Two key decisions, reflecting outrageous misreading of both the Constitution and the abuses of recent history, undermined citizenship and entrenched the rule of big money.

In the Citizens United case of 2010,the Court majority gave unlimited license to big personal and corporate money. And in the Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013, the Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, declaring open season for a new era of voter suppression.

As a consequence, the potential role of invigorated democracy as the antidote to concentrated wealth has been weakened. Economic inequality translates into inequality of political influence.

Reason Four. The Collapse of Equalizing Institutions. During the postwar boom, America actually became more equal. The bottom quarter gained more income share than the top quarter. This was no historical or technological accident. Shared prosperity was built on government activism promoting opportunity, strong unions providing decent wages even for the less educated, enforcement of other labor laws, debt-free public higher education, well-regulated financial institutions, a genuinely progressive income tax, and a trading system that did not promote outsourcing.

Politics -- not technology -- caused the evisceration of these instruments. Politics could take back a fairer America.

Reason Five. Bewildering Changes in How Jobs Are Structured.In the past couple of decades, regular payroll jobs with career prospects have increasingly been displaced by an economy of short-term gigs, contract work, and crappy payroll jobs without decent pay and benefits, or even regular hours. This shift often gets blamed on technology or education, but that's malarkey.

With a different political balance of forces, regular employees could not be disguised as contract workers; corporate executives could face felony convictions for wage theft; the right to unionize would be enforced; the windfall profits of the "share economy" would actually be shared with workers; large corporations like McDonalds could not pretend that the wages and working conditions in its franchises were somebody else's problem -- and full employment would give workers more bargaining power generally.

Reason Six. The Internalization of a Generation's Plight. Compared to my age cohort, Millennials are the screwed generation. The dream of homeownership has been undercut; good jobs with career prospects are in short supply; young adults begin economic life saddled with student debt; the pension system has been blown up; and if you want to have kids, society doesn't do anything to help the work-family straddle.

You'd expect young adults to be in the streets, but here the cynicism about politics blends with a natural inclination to make a virtue of necessity. Maybe I'll never own a home but I have to move around a lot anyway. I have all I need on my iPad, which means I'm less materialistic than my parents. And hey, I don't get to be a millionaire like the people who created Uber, but maybe I'll be an Uber driver, which is cool. Not to mention airbnb.

On the other hand, the political leader who called for a one-time write off of all past student debt might still rally a lot of Millennials. In the distribution of income and opportunity, a lot of questions that are actually political have been personalized and internalized. The assumption that we are all on our own is deeply political. But that can be changed.

Reason Seven. The Absence of a Movement. In the face of all these assaults on the working and middle class, there are many movements but no Movement. The Occupy movement, which gave us the phrase, "The One Percent," was too hung up on its own procedural purity to create a broad movement for economic justice.

Looking out at the plethora of local and national groups pursuing greater economic equality, one sees mainly idealism and fragmentation.

Some of it is caused by that dread phrase, 501 c 3. Well-meaning foundations fall in love with the charismatic activist leader de jour, seem intent on creating yet another grass roots group or coalition, and then that group needs to differentiate itself from rivals and dance to the foundation's tune. (This is a column for another day.)

The remedies that would restore economic opportunity and security to ordinary Americans are far outside mainstream political conversation, and will not become mainstream until forced onto the agenda by a genuine mass movement. Sometimes that movement gets lucky and finds a rendezvous with a sympathetic national leader.

This has occurred before -- in the Roosevelt Revolution of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s. But without a potent movement on the ground, mainstream electoral politics is likely to remain stuck with remedies too weak either to rouse public imagination and participation, or to provide more than token relief for today's extreme inequality.

This vicious circle -- really a downward spiral about depressed expectations and diminished participation -- can be reversed, as it has been reversed at moments in the American past. As that noted political consultant Joe Hill put it, as they were taking him to the gallows, "Don't mourn, organize."

Our current political situation is unprecedented. The vast majority of Americans keep falling behind economically because of changes in society's ground rules, while the rich get even richer -- yet this situation doesn't translate into a winning politics.

If anything, the right keeps gaining and the wealthy keep pulling away. How can this possibly be?

Let me suggest seven reasons:

Reason One. The Discrediting of Politics Itself. The Republican Party has devised a strategy of hamstringing government and making any remediation impossible.

Instead of the voters punishing Republicans, the result is cynicism and passivity, so the Republican strategy is vindicated and rewarded.

The media plays into this pattern by adopting a misleading narrative that makes the gridlock in Washington roughly the equal fault of both parties -- with lazy phrases such as "Washington is broken," or "politics is broken," or "partisan bickering." (Do a Google search of those clichés. It will make you sick.)

Eminent political scientists such as Jacob Hacker (Off-Center) and Thomas E. Mann and co-author Norman Ornstein, a self-described Republican (It's Even Worse Than It Looks) have thoroughly debunked the premise of symmetrical blame. It's Republicans who are the blockers. But these scholars and their evidence fail to alter the media storyline, and the damage has been done.

The very people who have given up on politics, and on Democrats as stewards of a social compact that helps regular working people, are precisely those regular working people -- who see the Dream getting away from them and government not helping.

Reason Two. Compromised Democrats. But the Democrats are hardly blameless. Instead of seizing on the collapse of 2008 as a disgrace for laissez-faire economics, deregulation, Wall Street and the Republican Party, Barack Obama tried to make nice with the GOP, refrained from cleaning out the big banks that caused the mess, and drank the Kool-Aid of budget balance.

The result: working people frustrated with economic backsliding had no party that really championed their interests. The fateful year 2008 may have been the worst missed moment for revolutionary reform in the history of the Republic -- and depending on who gets the Democratic nomination next time and what she does with it, 2016 could rival 2008 as a lost opportunity.

Republicans made big gains in the off-year elections of 2010 and 2014. Skeptical or cynical voters on the Democratic side (young people, poor people, African Americans, single women) are less likely to vote in off-years, while the rightwing base stays ferociously engaged. The more that potentially Democratic voters are disaffected, the more the Right can block any progress on inequality.

Reason Three. The Reign of Politicized Courts and Big Money. The Supreme Court's usual majority has become an opportunistic subsidiary of the Republican Party. Two key decisions, reflecting outrageous misreading of both the Constitution and the abuses of recent history, undermined citizenship and entrenched the rule of big money.

In the Citizens United case of 2010,the Court majority gave unlimited license to big personal and corporate money. And in the Shelby County v. Holder decision of 2013, the Court invalidated a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, declaring open season for a new era of voter suppression.

As a consequence, the potential role of invigorated democracy as the antidote to concentrated wealth has been weakened. Economic inequality translates into inequality of political influence.

Reason Four. The Collapse of Equalizing Institutions. During the postwar boom, America actually became more equal. The bottom quarter gained more income share than the top quarter. This was no historical or technological accident. Shared prosperity was built on government activism promoting opportunity, strong unions providing decent wages even for the less educated, enforcement of other labor laws, debt-free public higher education, well-regulated financial institutions, a genuinely progressive income tax, and a trading system that did not promote outsourcing.

Politics -- not technology -- caused the evisceration of these instruments. Politics could take back a fairer America.

Reason Five. Bewildering Changes in How Jobs Are Structured.In the past couple of decades, regular payroll jobs with career prospects have increasingly been displaced by an economy of short-term gigs, contract work, and crappy payroll jobs without decent pay and benefits, or even regular hours. This shift often gets blamed on technology or education, but that's malarkey.

With a different political balance of forces, regular employees could not be disguised as contract workers; corporate executives could face felony convictions for wage theft; the right to unionize would be enforced; the windfall profits of the "share economy" would actually be shared with workers; large corporations like McDonalds could not pretend that the wages and working conditions in its franchises were somebody else's problem -- and full employment would give workers more bargaining power generally.

Reason Six. The Internalization of a Generation's Plight. Compared to my age cohort, Millennials are the screwed generation. The dream of homeownership has been undercut; good jobs with career prospects are in short supply; young adults begin economic life saddled with student debt; the pension system has been blown up; and if you want to have kids, society doesn't do anything to help the work-family straddle.

You'd expect young adults to be in the streets, but here the cynicism about politics blends with a natural inclination to make a virtue of necessity. Maybe I'll never own a home but I have to move around a lot anyway. I have all I need on my iPad, which means I'm less materialistic than my parents. And hey, I don't get to be a millionaire like the people who created Uber, but maybe I'll be an Uber driver, which is cool. Not to mention airbnb.

On the other hand, the political leader who called for a one-time write off of all past student debt might still rally a lot of Millennials. In the distribution of income and opportunity, a lot of questions that are actually political have been personalized and internalized. The assumption that we are all on our own is deeply political. But that can be changed.

Reason Seven. The Absence of a Movement. In the face of all these assaults on the working and middle class, there are many movements but no Movement. The Occupy movement, which gave us the phrase, "The One Percent," was too hung up on its own procedural purity to create a broad movement for economic justice.

Looking out at the plethora of local and national groups pursuing greater economic equality, one sees mainly idealism and fragmentation.

Some of it is caused by that dread phrase, 501 c 3. Well-meaning foundations fall in love with the charismatic activist leader de jour, seem intent on creating yet another grass roots group or coalition, and then that group needs to differentiate itself from rivals and dance to the foundation's tune. (This is a column for another day.)

The remedies that would restore economic opportunity and security to ordinary Americans are far outside mainstream political conversation, and will not become mainstream until forced onto the agenda by a genuine mass movement. Sometimes that movement gets lucky and finds a rendezvous with a sympathetic national leader.

This has occurred before -- in the Roosevelt Revolution of the 1930s and the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s. But without a potent movement on the ground, mainstream electoral politics is likely to remain stuck with remedies too weak either to rouse public imagination and participation, or to provide more than token relief for today's extreme inequality.

This vicious circle -- really a downward spiral about depressed expectations and diminished participation -- can be reversed, as it has been reversed at moments in the American past. As that noted political consultant Joe Hill put it, as they were taking him to the gallows, "Don't mourn, organize."

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/culture/more-scientology-shockers-5-revelations-going-clear-left-out-hbo-filmMore Scientology Shockers: 5 Revelations from “Going Clear” Left out of the HBO Filmhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87981252/0/alternet~More-Scientology-Shockers-Revelations-from-%e2%80%9cGoing-Clear%e2%80%9d-Left-out-of-the-HBO-Film

From the disappearance of David Miscavige's wife to the Church's smear campaign against journalist Paulette Cooper.

People were shocked by the revelations in “Going Clear,” Alex Gibney’s expose about the Church of Scientology that aired on HBO last night. But when it comes to allegations of Scientology’s crimes and abuses, the film is really just the tip of the iceberg. Lawrence Wright — who wrote the book on which the film is based — uncovered so much dirt on the Church that it was impossible for Gibney to include every point of interest in a two-hour film. Here are five more stunning segments from Wright’s book (and then go and read the incredible book for yourself).

The disappearance of Shelly Miscavige: The film paints Church leader David Miscavige as an abusive, violent, power-hungry autocrat; however, it omits the chilling detail that “COB”‘s wife, Shelly, hasn’t been seen in public since 2007. According to Wright, a number of ex-Sea Org members believe she is being guarded at a California Church facility. (In 2012, Shelly’s attorneys said that “any reports that she is missing are false. Mrs. Miscavige has been working nonstop in the Church, as she always has.”) For more interesting details, read Vanity Fair’s 2004 profile, titled “Scientology’s Missing Queen.”

The harassment of Paulette Cooper:

The film depicts the scope of Scientology’s litigiousness and its campaigns against its critics, particularly Mike Rinder’s harassment of BBC reporter John Sweeney. But it doesn’t go into detail about the harrowing case of Paulette Cooper, a journalist who published “The Scandal of Scientology” in 1971. Wright’s book includes an account of the Church’s so-called Operation Freakout, which was reportedly designed to “get Cooper incarcerated in a mental institution or jail” after her book came out. And indeed, Cooper’s personal and professional life were turned inside out. As Wright writes, “She was followed; her phone was tapped; she was sued nineteen times.” Cooper was even indicted for making bomb threats against the Church as well as for perjuring herself, although the case was eventually dropped.

The death of Lisa McPherson:

Wright goes into detail about the horrific case of Lisa McPherson, who died in the Church’s care after suffering a mental breakdown. Because McPherson had recently been declared “Clear,” her breakdown was potentially damaging for the Church; their response was to seclude her for 17 days in a Florida hotel to undergo a Scientology procedure known as the “Introspection Rundown.” Per Wright: “Instead of calming down, McPherson stopped eating. She screamed, she clawed her attendants, she spoke in gibberish, she fouled herself, she banged her head against the wall. Staff members strapped her down and tried to feed her with a turkey baster. On December 5, McPherson slipped into a coma.” Then, instead of taking her to the nearest hospital, Wright claims that Church operatives drove her to a hospital much further away that housed a doctor affiliated with the Church. By the time they got there, she was dead.

McPherson’s death kicked off an investigation and lawsuit that lasted for five years, and created a P.R. nightmare for the Church. Says Wright: “In the eyes of the world press, Scientology had murdered Lisa McPherson. She was one of nine Scientologists who had died under mysterious circumstances at the Clearwater facility.”

Miscavige’s lavish life:

You got a sense of it in the film, but Wright’s book paints a stark contrast between the leader’s lavish life and the poverty of the Church’s members. As Wright illustrates, Miscavige’s daily dinner is a five-course meal with the choice between two entrees. As Wright says: “Miscavige’s favorite foods include wild mushroom risotto, linguine in white clam sauce, and pate de foie gras. Fresh fruit and vegetables are purchased from local markets or shipped in from overseas. Several times a week, a truck from Santa Monica brings Atlantic salmon, or live lobster, flown in fresh from the East Coast or Canada. Corn-fed lamb arrives from New Zealand….Two full-time chefs work all day preparing these meals, with several full-time stewards to serve them.”

The details continue, with Wright describing Miscavige’s $20,000 per week food costs — an estimation that includes his (now-vanished) wife and guests — as well as his $150,000 stereo system, his personal tanning bed and high-end gym, his six motorcycles, his armor-plated GMC Safari with bulletproof windows and satellite television, his shoes, which are custom-made by the royal family’s shoemaker in London, the private Boeing business jet on which he travels, and on and on.

The final showdown:

Wright’s book concludes with him and his team at the New Yorker going head to head in a conference room with the Church’s lawyers as they fact-check Wright’s Paul Haggis profile. It’s a remarkable showdown, which illustrates just how challenging it must have been to produce the book and film, given the Church’s constant scrutiny and aggressive litigiousness. The chapter also sees a ballsy Wright challenging the Church on points of doctrine; an especially revealing moment takes place when former Church spokesman Tommy Davis acknowledges that if it is true that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war, then “Scientology is based on a lie.” Of course, Wright is able to prove pretty conclusively that the records of Hubbard’s injuries are invalid. As he puts it: “I believe everyone on the New Yorker side of the table was taken aback by this daring equation, one that seemed not only fair but testable.”

From the disappearance of David Miscavige's wife to the Church's smear campaign against journalist Paulette Cooper.

People were shocked by the revelations in “Going Clear,” Alex Gibney’s expose about the Church of Scientology that aired on HBO last night. But when it comes to allegations of Scientology’s crimes and abuses, the film is really just the tip of the iceberg. Lawrence Wright — who wrote the book on which the film is based — uncovered so much dirt on the Church that it was impossible for Gibney to include every point of interest in a two-hour film. Here are five more stunning segments from Wright’s book (and then go and read the incredible book for yourself).

The disappearance of Shelly Miscavige: The film paints Church leader David Miscavige as an abusive, violent, power-hungry autocrat; however, it omits the chilling detail that “COB”‘s wife, Shelly, hasn’t been seen in public since 2007. According to Wright, a number of ex-Sea Org members believe she is being guarded at a California Church facility. (In 2012, Shelly’s attorneys said that “any reports that she is missing are false. Mrs. Miscavige has been working nonstop in the Church, as she always has.”) For more interesting details, read Vanity Fair’s 2004 profile, titled “Scientology’s Missing Queen.”

The harassment of Paulette Cooper:

The film depicts the scope of Scientology’s litigiousness and its campaigns against its critics, particularly Mike Rinder’s harassment of BBC reporter John Sweeney. But it doesn’t go into detail about the harrowing case of Paulette Cooper, a journalist who published “The Scandal of Scientology” in 1971. Wright’s book includes an account of the Church’s so-called Operation Freakout, which was reportedly designed to “get Cooper incarcerated in a mental institution or jail” after her book came out. And indeed, Cooper’s personal and professional life were turned inside out. As Wright writes, “She was followed; her phone was tapped; she was sued nineteen times.” Cooper was even indicted for making bomb threats against the Church as well as for perjuring herself, although the case was eventually dropped.

The death of Lisa McPherson:

Wright goes into detail about the horrific case of Lisa McPherson, who died in the Church’s care after suffering a mental breakdown. Because McPherson had recently been declared “Clear,” her breakdown was potentially damaging for the Church; their response was to seclude her for 17 days in a Florida hotel to undergo a Scientology procedure known as the “Introspection Rundown.” Per Wright: “Instead of calming down, McPherson stopped eating. She screamed, she clawed her attendants, she spoke in gibberish, she fouled herself, she banged her head against the wall. Staff members strapped her down and tried to feed her with a turkey baster. On December 5, McPherson slipped into a coma.” Then, instead of taking her to the nearest hospital, Wright claims that Church operatives drove her to a hospital much further away that housed a doctor affiliated with the Church. By the time they got there, she was dead.

McPherson’s death kicked off an investigation and lawsuit that lasted for five years, and created a P.R. nightmare for the Church. Says Wright: “In the eyes of the world press, Scientology had murdered Lisa McPherson. She was one of nine Scientologists who had died under mysterious circumstances at the Clearwater facility.”

Miscavige’s lavish life:

You got a sense of it in the film, but Wright’s book paints a stark contrast between the leader’s lavish life and the poverty of the Church’s members. As Wright illustrates, Miscavige’s daily dinner is a five-course meal with the choice between two entrees. As Wright says: “Miscavige’s favorite foods include wild mushroom risotto, linguine in white clam sauce, and pate de foie gras. Fresh fruit and vegetables are purchased from local markets or shipped in from overseas. Several times a week, a truck from Santa Monica brings Atlantic salmon, or live lobster, flown in fresh from the East Coast or Canada. Corn-fed lamb arrives from New Zealand….Two full-time chefs work all day preparing these meals, with several full-time stewards to serve them.”

The details continue, with Wright describing Miscavige’s $20,000 per week food costs — an estimation that includes his (now-vanished) wife and guests — as well as his $150,000 stereo system, his personal tanning bed and high-end gym, his six motorcycles, his armor-plated GMC Safari with bulletproof windows and satellite television, his shoes, which are custom-made by the royal family’s shoemaker in London, the private Boeing business jet on which he travels, and on and on.

The final showdown:

Wright’s book concludes with him and his team at the New Yorker going head to head in a conference room with the Church’s lawyers as they fact-check Wright’s Paul Haggis profile. It’s a remarkable showdown, which illustrates just how challenging it must have been to produce the book and film, given the Church’s constant scrutiny and aggressive litigiousness. The chapter also sees a ballsy Wright challenging the Church on points of doctrine; an especially revealing moment takes place when former Church spokesman Tommy Davis acknowledges that if it is true that Hubbard was never actually injured during the war, then “Scientology is based on a lie.” Of course, Wright is able to prove pretty conclusively that the records of Hubbard’s injuries are invalid. As he puts it: “I believe everyone on the New Yorker side of the table was taken aback by this daring equation, one that seemed not only fair but testable.”

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/media/why-social-media-protecting-men-periods-breast-milk-and-body-hairWhy Is Social Media Protecting Men from Periods, Breast Milk and Body Hair?http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/88012766/0/alternet~Why-Is-Social-Media-Protecting-Men-from-Periods-Breast-Milk-and-Body-Hair

Are men really that delicate?

There’s a predictable social media formula for what women’s pictures online should look like. Breasts in barely-there bikinis are good (thumbs-up emoji, even), but breasts with babies attached them are questionable. Women wearing next to nothing is commonplace, but if you’re over a size 10 youraccount may be banned. Close-up shots of women’s asses and hardly-covered vaginas are fine, so long as said body parts are hairless.

And now, in a controversy that once again brings together technology, art, feminism and sex, Instagram is under fire for removing a self-portrait from artist Rupi Kaur that showed a small amount of her menstrual blood. Apparently having a period violates the site’s Terms of Service.

The broader message to women couldn’t be clearer: SeXXXy images are appropriate, but images of women’s bodies doing normal women body things are not. Or, to put a more crass point on it: Only pictures of women who men want to fuck, please.

“I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak,” she wrote.

Because, truly, it’s difficult to imagine women being offended by pictures of breastfeeding, unkempt bikini lines or period blood - that’s a standard Monday for a lot of us. It’s men that social media giants are “protecting” - men who have grown up on sanitized and sexualized images of female bodies. Men who have been taught to believe by pop culture, advertising and beyond that women’s bodies are there for them. And if they have to see a woman that is anything other than thin, hairless and ready for sex - well, bring out the smelling salts.

The upside, of course, is that the very nature of social media has made it easier for women to present a more diverse set of images on what the female form can look like and mean. Selfies, for example - thought by some to be the epitome of frivolity and self-conceit - are now being touted by feminist academics and artists as a way for women to “seize the gaze” and offer a new sense of control to women as subjects rather than objects.

When we have the power to create our own images en masse, we have the power to create a new narrative - one that flies in the face of what the mainstream would like us to look and act like.

To Instagram’s credit, the company restored Kaur’s picture after complaints - much as Facebook changed their standards to allow pictures of “women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring.” Technology companies are starting to understand that if they want to put the power of pictures in their users’ hands, they’re going to have to be okay with women being fully human - not just mirror images of what pop culture wants us to be.

As for the people who are scandalized by women’s bodies and their natural functions: You don’t have to “like” it, but you will have to live with it.

There’s a predictable social media formula for what women’s pictures online should look like. Breasts in barely-there bikinis are good (thumbs-up emoji, even), but breasts with babies attached them are questionable. Women wearing next to nothing is commonplace, but if you’re over a size 10 youraccount may be banned. Close-up shots of women’s asses and hardly-covered vaginas are fine, so long as said body parts are hairless.

And now, in a controversy that once again brings together technology, art, feminism and sex, Instagram is under fire for removing a self-portrait from artist Rupi Kaur that showed a small amount of her menstrual blood. Apparently having a period violates the site’s Terms of Service.

The broader message to women couldn’t be clearer: SeXXXy images are appropriate, but images of women’s bodies doing normal women body things are not. Or, to put a more crass point on it: Only pictures of women who men want to fuck, please.

“I will not apologize for not feeding the ego and pride of misogynist society that will have my body in underwear but not be okay with a small leak,” she wrote.

Because, truly, it’s difficult to imagine women being offended by pictures of breastfeeding, unkempt bikini lines or period blood - that’s a standard Monday for a lot of us. It’s men that social media giants are “protecting” - men who have grown up on sanitized and sexualized images of female bodies. Men who have been taught to believe by pop culture, advertising and beyond that women’s bodies are there for them. And if they have to see a woman that is anything other than thin, hairless and ready for sex - well, bring out the smelling salts.

The upside, of course, is that the very nature of social media has made it easier for women to present a more diverse set of images on what the female form can look like and mean. Selfies, for example - thought by some to be the epitome of frivolity and self-conceit - are now being touted by feminist academics and artists as a way for women to “seize the gaze” and offer a new sense of control to women as subjects rather than objects.

When we have the power to create our own images en masse, we have the power to create a new narrative - one that flies in the face of what the mainstream would like us to look and act like.

To Instagram’s credit, the company restored Kaur’s picture after complaints - much as Facebook changed their standards to allow pictures of “women actively engaged in breastfeeding or showing breasts with post-mastectomy scarring.” Technology companies are starting to understand that if they want to put the power of pictures in their users’ hands, they’re going to have to be okay with women being fully human - not just mirror images of what pop culture wants us to be.

As for the people who are scandalized by women’s bodies and their natural functions: You don’t have to “like” it, but you will have to live with it.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/culture/five-worst-congresses-american-historyFive of the Worst Congresses in American Historyhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87981254/0/alternet~Five-of-the-Worst-Congresses-in-American-History

The current Congress is approaching a single-digit approval rating. Believe it or not, there have been worse.

America is caught in the throes of the 114th Congress. May the world take pity on us. They are so gridlocked they can’t even agree that sex trafficking is a bad thing. It is certain, even years before the next election cycle, that we will be calling 114 Congress the worst ever, just as we called the 113th Congress the worst ever.

Then again, that wasn’t true. The 112th was actually the worst ever, at least statistically. The 113th passed 296 laws. The 112th passed only 283. In any case, even those meager numbers should be judged on a curve. A third of the laws passed in these two Congresses were ceremonial in nature, like the historic last measure passed by the 113th: a commemoration of the "centennial of the passenger pigeon extinction.”

In 1948, Harry S. Truman won an historic surprise election by railing against the “Do Nothing” Congress. That sorry body passed 900 bills. One wonders what Truman would have said about today’s legislators? House Speaker John Boehner memorably asked that the Congress not be judged on the number of laws it passed, but how many it repealed. Well, that would be zero. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

There was the unending Benghazi blather that concluded nothing nefarious went on leading up to that tragic incident. There were the three billion attempts to repeal Obamacare. Nothing meaningful passed to aid the economy, rebuild infrastructure, or deal with millions of illegal immigrants in a sane and compassionate manner. No budget could be agreed upon.

Meanwhile, money roars into the system, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and our elected officials appear to be bought and branded by moneyed interests. Cynicism is rampant, and it is no mystery why approval of Congress is approaching single digits. Still, were 112 and 113 the worst Congresses ever? Probably. But there were a few that approached them, simply in terms of historically bad laws passed.

1. The 5th United States Congress

In 1798, the United States was in an undeclared war with France. France was seizing American ships because the U.S. had been too cozy with France’s enemy, Great Britain, and because the U.S. had conveniently refused to repay the new Republican France the money it borrowed during the American Revolution (the U.S. claimed it owed the money to the old French monarchy, not the new French Republic). The President was John Adams, successor to George Washington, and not particularly popular. Adams’ Federalist Party was in control of Congress, and their solution to Adams’ personality issues was to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts. Purportedly passed to quell the threat from non-citizens in cahoots with France, the real political reason was to quell the threat from the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, who sympathized with the French and who stood ready to defeat the Federalists in the next election.

The Alien and Sedition Acts not only made it harder to become an American citizen (14 years as opposed to the former five years), but allowed the government to arrest, imprison and/or deport any non-citizen who posed a “danger” to national security. More insidious, the Acts allowed the government to do the same to anyone, citizen or not, who spoke out against the federal government. This threatened to undo many of the freedoms the fledgling American republic stood for. Predictably, this did not serve to increase Adams’ popularity. He and the Federalists were defeated in the next election by Thomas Jefferson, and the Acts were allowed to expire. All that is, except for one of the acts, the Alien Enemies Act, which the U.S. still had in effect during World War II, and used to arrest, imprison and seize the property of Japanese, German and Italian citizens living in the U.S.

2. The 31st United States Congress

In 1850 the country was simmering with sectional conflict over the “peculiar institution,” slavery. Already the 31st Congress had passed the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California into the union as a free state, and allowed slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories until its residents voted on the issue. The Compromise was yet another effort (the Missouri Compromise of 1820 being another one) to fend off the looming threat of succession and Civil War.

In September 1850, the Congress, in a capitulation to slavery advocates, passed the Fugitive Slave Act. This heinous legislation removed one of the few avenues escaped slaves had to gain their freedom. Prior to this Act, if a slave could escape to a free state or territory, he or she might have had hope of protection. Free states could claim that slave state laws did not apply in free states, and that slaves were people, not property. The Fugitive Slave Act changed that. Under the law, special commissioners were appointed to enforce the Act. Escaped slaves could not testify in their own behalf, and there was no jury trial to decide their fate. Commissioners were paid for each decision rendered, and remarkably, they were paid twice as much if they rendered a decision in favor of the slave owner ($10 vs. $5). Penalties were imposed on any marshals who refused to follow the Act, as well as anyone who aided in helping slaves escape. Bounties were paid to anyone who captured and returned a slave to his or her owner. Predictably, the Fugitive Slave Act created an uproar in free states, and resulted in more and louder abolitionists. Free states passed laws attempting to overrule the Act. The Underground Railroad grew larger and more efficient. All this ultimately led to the Civil War everyone wanted to avoid.

3. The 88th United States Congress

The 88th Congress must have had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Under their watch, we saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as historic a piece of legislation as ever became law, ending discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, as well as ending racial segregation in schools and other public facilities, Jim Crow and voting discrimination. On the other hand, it passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

On Aug. 2, 1964, the USS Maddox was engaged in illegal surveillance in North Vietnamese waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The warship was fired upon by North Vietnamese torpedo boats (they missed). Two days later, the Maddox reported being attacked again, although North Vietnam denied it, and an investigation in 2005 concluded that there was no attack. Nevertheless, in response to the phantom attack, President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes against North Vietnam. He requested a resolution from Congress, "expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia," and giving support for, "for all necessary action to protect our Armed Forces."

On August 10, after only a few hours of debate on the issue, the 88th Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving LBJ the authority to wage war unilaterally, without the approval of Congress. In other words, Congress literally gave up the powers it had under the Constitution to declare war, and ceded them to the President. Thus began the expansion of the Vietnam War and the subsequent deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Though repealed in 1971, the resolution provided the precedent that has allowed our oresidents to wage American military wars not expressly declared by the Congress.

4. The 66th Congress of the United States

They didn’t call them the Roaring Twenties for nothing. The decade was loud, lawless and theoretically dry, thanks to the 66th Congress and the passage of the Volstead Act, also known as Prohibition. Temperance societies had been around for 100 years, but by 1900 they began to grow in strength. They clamored for the end of alcohol consumption, blaming booze for many of society's ills and aiming to improve the moral character of the country. By 1919, many states had passed bans on the production and consumption of liquor, and the United States 66th Congress followed suit with the Volstead Act, making Prohibition the law of the land. President Woodrow Wilson actually vetoed the legislation, but the 66th overrode his veto and ensured its place among terrible Congresses.

In the beginning, Prohibition seemed to work, as bars shut down, drunkenness abated and advocates crowed about improving morality. However, sensing an opportunity, criminal elements soon began filling the vacuum and organized crime was born. Much as today’s “war on drugs” has spawned overcrowded prisons and unspeakable gang violence, the Volstead Act’s war on liquor spawned a proliferation of bootleggers, violence and legendary outlaws like Al Capone. The federal government was overwhelmed by the abundance of lawbreakers and the dearth of enforcement agents. In 1933, the Congress finally cried uncle and repealed Prohibition.

5. The 21st Congress of the United States

They were known as the Five Civilized Tribes. The Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Muscogee-Creek, and Choctaw Indian tribes had established Native American nations on lands east of the Mississippi River in the southeast United States. Sadly for them, the states they were settled in coveted the land the Indians lived on. Additionally, President Andrew Jackson was a noted Indian hater who supported removing the tribes. The political result was the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which dictated the removal of the tribes from their lands, state seizure of their property and their relocation to territory west of the Mississippi River.

“What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms?” wrote President Jackson at the time. Some voices in Congress (Davey Crockett among them) spoke out against the Act, as did Christian missionaries and others, but over the next several years, the removal was implemented anyway. Most shamefully, the Cherokees were sent west over the Trail of Tears, a forced march in which thousands of them died from disease and exposure. The Seminole tribe resisted, waging guerrilla warfare against the U.S. Thousands were killed during the years-long war, but ultimately the tribe prevailed and gained the right to stay in their native Florida lands.

The current Congress is approaching a single-digit approval rating. Believe it or not, there have been worse.

America is caught in the throes of the 114th Congress. May the world take pity on us. They are so gridlocked they can’t even agree that sex trafficking is a bad thing. It is certain, even years before the next election cycle, that we will be calling 114 Congress the worst ever, just as we called the 113th Congress the worst ever.

Then again, that wasn’t true. The 112th was actually the worst ever, at least statistically. The 113th passed 296 laws. The 112th passed only 283. In any case, even those meager numbers should be judged on a curve. A third of the laws passed in these two Congresses were ceremonial in nature, like the historic last measure passed by the 113th: a commemoration of the "centennial of the passenger pigeon extinction.”

In 1948, Harry S. Truman won an historic surprise election by railing against the “Do Nothing” Congress. That sorry body passed 900 bills. One wonders what Truman would have said about today’s legislators? House Speaker John Boehner memorably asked that the Congress not be judged on the number of laws it passed, but how many it repealed. Well, that would be zero. Sorry, Mr. Speaker.

There was the unending Benghazi blather that concluded nothing nefarious went on leading up to that tragic incident. There were the three billion attempts to repeal Obamacare. Nothing meaningful passed to aid the economy, rebuild infrastructure, or deal with millions of illegal immigrants in a sane and compassionate manner. No budget could be agreed upon.

Meanwhile, money roars into the system, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and our elected officials appear to be bought and branded by moneyed interests. Cynicism is rampant, and it is no mystery why approval of Congress is approaching single digits. Still, were 112 and 113 the worst Congresses ever? Probably. But there were a few that approached them, simply in terms of historically bad laws passed.

1. The 5th United States Congress

In 1798, the United States was in an undeclared war with France. France was seizing American ships because the U.S. had been too cozy with France’s enemy, Great Britain, and because the U.S. had conveniently refused to repay the new Republican France the money it borrowed during the American Revolution (the U.S. claimed it owed the money to the old French monarchy, not the new French Republic). The President was John Adams, successor to George Washington, and not particularly popular. Adams’ Federalist Party was in control of Congress, and their solution to Adams’ personality issues was to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts. Purportedly passed to quell the threat from non-citizens in cahoots with France, the real political reason was to quell the threat from the Democratic-Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson, who sympathized with the French and who stood ready to defeat the Federalists in the next election.

The Alien and Sedition Acts not only made it harder to become an American citizen (14 years as opposed to the former five years), but allowed the government to arrest, imprison and/or deport any non-citizen who posed a “danger” to national security. More insidious, the Acts allowed the government to do the same to anyone, citizen or not, who spoke out against the federal government. This threatened to undo many of the freedoms the fledgling American republic stood for. Predictably, this did not serve to increase Adams’ popularity. He and the Federalists were defeated in the next election by Thomas Jefferson, and the Acts were allowed to expire. All that is, except for one of the acts, the Alien Enemies Act, which the U.S. still had in effect during World War II, and used to arrest, imprison and seize the property of Japanese, German and Italian citizens living in the U.S.

2. The 31st United States Congress

In 1850 the country was simmering with sectional conflict over the “peculiar institution,” slavery. Already the 31st Congress had passed the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California into the union as a free state, and allowed slavery in the Utah and New Mexico territories until its residents voted on the issue. The Compromise was yet another effort (the Missouri Compromise of 1820 being another one) to fend off the looming threat of succession and Civil War.

In September 1850, the Congress, in a capitulation to slavery advocates, passed the Fugitive Slave Act. This heinous legislation removed one of the few avenues escaped slaves had to gain their freedom. Prior to this Act, if a slave could escape to a free state or territory, he or she might have had hope of protection. Free states could claim that slave state laws did not apply in free states, and that slaves were people, not property. The Fugitive Slave Act changed that. Under the law, special commissioners were appointed to enforce the Act. Escaped slaves could not testify in their own behalf, and there was no jury trial to decide their fate. Commissioners were paid for each decision rendered, and remarkably, they were paid twice as much if they rendered a decision in favor of the slave owner ($10 vs. $5). Penalties were imposed on any marshals who refused to follow the Act, as well as anyone who aided in helping slaves escape. Bounties were paid to anyone who captured and returned a slave to his or her owner. Predictably, the Fugitive Slave Act created an uproar in free states, and resulted in more and louder abolitionists. Free states passed laws attempting to overrule the Act. The Underground Railroad grew larger and more efficient. All this ultimately led to the Civil War everyone wanted to avoid.

3. The 88th United States Congress

The 88th Congress must have had a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Under their watch, we saw the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as historic a piece of legislation as ever became law, ending discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, as well as ending racial segregation in schools and other public facilities, Jim Crow and voting discrimination. On the other hand, it passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

On Aug. 2, 1964, the USS Maddox was engaged in illegal surveillance in North Vietnamese waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. The warship was fired upon by North Vietnamese torpedo boats (they missed). Two days later, the Maddox reported being attacked again, although North Vietnam denied it, and an investigation in 2005 concluded that there was no attack. Nevertheless, in response to the phantom attack, President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes against North Vietnam. He requested a resolution from Congress, "expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia," and giving support for, "for all necessary action to protect our Armed Forces."

On August 10, after only a few hours of debate on the issue, the 88th Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving LBJ the authority to wage war unilaterally, without the approval of Congress. In other words, Congress literally gave up the powers it had under the Constitution to declare war, and ceded them to the President. Thus began the expansion of the Vietnam War and the subsequent deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Though repealed in 1971, the resolution provided the precedent that has allowed our oresidents to wage American military wars not expressly declared by the Congress.

4. The 66th Congress of the United States

They didn’t call them the Roaring Twenties for nothing. The decade was loud, lawless and theoretically dry, thanks to the 66th Congress and the passage of the Volstead Act, also known as Prohibition. Temperance societies had been around for 100 years, but by 1900 they began to grow in strength. They clamored for the end of alcohol consumption, blaming booze for many of society's ills and aiming to improve the moral character of the country. By 1919, many states had passed bans on the production and consumption of liquor, and the United States 66th Congress followed suit with the Volstead Act, making Prohibition the law of the land. President Woodrow Wilson actually vetoed the legislation, but the 66th overrode his veto and ensured its place among terrible Congresses.

In the beginning, Prohibition seemed to work, as bars shut down, drunkenness abated and advocates crowed about improving morality. However, sensing an opportunity, criminal elements soon began filling the vacuum and organized crime was born. Much as today’s “war on drugs” has spawned overcrowded prisons and unspeakable gang violence, the Volstead Act’s war on liquor spawned a proliferation of bootleggers, violence and legendary outlaws like Al Capone. The federal government was overwhelmed by the abundance of lawbreakers and the dearth of enforcement agents. In 1933, the Congress finally cried uncle and repealed Prohibition.

5. The 21st Congress of the United States

They were known as the Five Civilized Tribes. The Chickasaw, Seminole, Cherokee, Muscogee-Creek, and Choctaw Indian tribes had established Native American nations on lands east of the Mississippi River in the southeast United States. Sadly for them, the states they were settled in coveted the land the Indians lived on. Additionally, President Andrew Jackson was a noted Indian hater who supported removing the tribes. The political result was the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which dictated the removal of the tribes from their lands, state seizure of their property and their relocation to territory west of the Mississippi River.

“What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms?” wrote President Jackson at the time. Some voices in Congress (Davey Crockett among them) spoke out against the Act, as did Christian missionaries and others, but over the next several years, the removal was implemented anyway. Most shamefully, the Cherokees were sent west over the Trail of Tears, a forced march in which thousands of them died from disease and exposure. The Seminole tribe resisted, waging guerrilla warfare against the U.S. Thousands were killed during the years-long war, but ultimately the tribe prevailed and gained the right to stay in their native Florida lands.

Fox's coverage of Germanwings crash, just as ignorant as you'd expect!

On the latest episode of The Trews, British comedian and activist Russell Brand discussed the crash of a Germanwings plane and the media’s rush to blame it on the suicidal captain.

He engages in a dialogue with a Neil Cavuto monologue in which the Fox News host speculates about the pilot’s motivations.

“In a way,” Brand says, “this is the perfect Fox News story, because there’s no way of knowing for certain what were the motivations — and in that gap of ignorance, there’s room for tremendous fear and great propaganda.”

After Cavuto links the pilot’s actions to ISIS fighters and Adolf Hitler, about whom Brand says, “you know, some work’s been done on the subject of Hitler, and it turns out that at that anti-Semitism was widespread and German nationalism was on the rise because of social and economic conditions.”

“So in a way, Adolf Hitler is a good example — one lone madman cannot personally be responsible for a genocide. He requires the correct conditions, and the correct conditions were created as a result of the First World War, widespread anti-Semitism across Europe.”

After discussing at length how much Fox News benefits from having a Hitler-like figure to blame in order to avoid having to address the larger social conditions that make such a person possible, Brand addresses how convenient it is for Fox to be able to pin responsibility for atrocities on mental illness.

“If you try to think,” Brand says, “‘Why did this nutty pilot nuttily crash his plane into a mountain?’ then it’s really hard to come up with answers, let alone solutions.” He then discusses how suicide is now the biggest killer of young men in Britain, and how half of Americans have dealt with a serious bout of mental illness.

“Why are we living in a time of a mental illness plague?” Brand asks, then answers his own question, saying “the reason Fox News can’t be honest about what causes mental illness is because Fox News is what causes mental illness.”

“Fox News is the propaganda machine of modern capitalism that tells us that the way to solve our problems is through purchasing and buying things — by identifying ourselves with our roles as consumers, and not as participants or members of society.”

Fox's coverage of Germanwings crash, just as ignorant as you'd expect!

On the latest episode of The Trews, British comedian and activist Russell Brand discussed the crash of a Germanwings plane and the media’s rush to blame it on the suicidal captain.

He engages in a dialogue with a Neil Cavuto monologue in which the Fox News host speculates about the pilot’s motivations.

“In a way,” Brand says, “this is the perfect Fox News story, because there’s no way of knowing for certain what were the motivations — and in that gap of ignorance, there’s room for tremendous fear and great propaganda.”

After Cavuto links the pilot’s actions to ISIS fighters and Adolf Hitler, about whom Brand says, “you know, some work’s been done on the subject of Hitler, and it turns out that at that anti-Semitism was widespread and German nationalism was on the rise because of social and economic conditions.”

“So in a way, Adolf Hitler is a good example — one lone madman cannot personally be responsible for a genocide. He requires the correct conditions, and the correct conditions were created as a result of the First World War, widespread anti-Semitism across Europe.”

After discussing at length how much Fox News benefits from having a Hitler-like figure to blame in order to avoid having to address the larger social conditions that make such a person possible, Brand addresses how convenient it is for Fox to be able to pin responsibility for atrocities on mental illness.

“If you try to think,” Brand says, “‘Why did this nutty pilot nuttily crash his plane into a mountain?’ then it’s really hard to come up with answers, let alone solutions.” He then discusses how suicide is now the biggest killer of young men in Britain, and how half of Americans have dealt with a serious bout of mental illness.

“Why are we living in a time of a mental illness plague?” Brand asks, then answers his own question, saying “the reason Fox News can’t be honest about what causes mental illness is because Fox News is what causes mental illness.”

“Fox News is the propaganda machine of modern capitalism that tells us that the way to solve our problems is through purchasing and buying things — by identifying ourselves with our roles as consumers, and not as participants or members of society.”

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/fracking/what-frack-happening-hailing-major-activist-victories-anti-fracking-movementWhat the Frack Is Happening? Hailing the Major Activist Victories in the Anti-Fracking Movementhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87964067/0/alternet~What-the-Frack-Is-Happening-Hailing-the-Major-Activist-Victories-in-the-AntiFracking-Movement

From the aggressive anti-fracking moves in Maryland to a statewide ban in New York, the anti-fracking movement is alive and well.

The nation's first federal regulations on fracking, unveiled by the Obama administration last week, sparked immediate criticism from leading anti-fracking activists.

Americans Against Fracking, a coalition of 250 environmental and liberal groups that includes Greenpeace, 350.org, MoveOn.org, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth, issued a statement characterizing the new rules—meant chiefly to reduce the threat of fracking-related water contamination—as "toothless."

Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, who serves on the Americans Against Fracking advisory board, said that Obama's fracking regulations "are nothing more than a giveaway to the oil and gas industry." The group's goal is a complete fracking ban on federal land, where as many as 100,00 oil and gas wells have been drilled.

The new rules apply only to oil and gas drilling on federal lands, which represent about 25 percent of the national fossil fuel output and only some 10 percent of the nation's fracking. The rules don't apply to drilling on private or state-owned land. Currently, fracking occurs in 22 states.

Since states are responsible for regulating most of the fracking in the U.S., the anti-fracking battlefield—a patchwork of communities around the nation taking a stand to protect their air, water and soil–is understandably a bit fractured. With that in mind, here's a brief look around the country at some recent fracktivist highlights at the state and local level.

February 24. Bolstered by an admission by California state regulators that oil companies are disposing toxic waste into protected aquifers in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, more than 150 environmental and community groups filed a legal petition urging the governor to use his emergency powers to place a moratorium on fracking.

March 20. California state Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) and other lawmakers sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown urging him to "stop illegal injection into non-exempt aquifers" to protect the state's water from oil waste.

Colorado

February 24. Coloradans Against Fracking activists crashed a state oil and gas task force meeting, launching a campaign for a statewide fracking ban. "Our primary goal is to convince Governor Hickenlooper to ban fracking," said Karen Dike, a member of the new coalition. He can do that with an executive order."

March 18. WildEarth Guardians filed an appeal to halt plans by the Bureau of Land Management to open up 36,000 acres of public lands along the Front Range of Colorado to fracking.

"Climate denial at the Interior Department is fueling a fracking rush on our public lands and undermining our nation's efforts to rein in carbon pollution," said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians.

Maryland

March 24. Maryland's House of Delegates passed a bill to ban fracking for three years by a veto-proof 94 to 45. However, it's unclear whether HB 449, currently under review in the state's Senate Committee on Education, Health and Environmental Affairs, has enough support in the Senate to become a law.

March 24. The Senate voted 29 to 17 in favor of a bill holding energy companies financially liable for injury, death or property laws caused by their fracking activities.

Together these measures mark the legislature's most aggressive action to curb fracking in the state.

New Mexico

December 30. The BLM announced it was deferring the issuance of five Navajo allotment parcels for fracking near Chaco Canyon, a World Heritage site, in response to a protest filed by a coalition of environmentalists and watchdog groups demanding a suspension of fracking on public lands in the northwest region of the state.

"Deferring these parcels was the right, and indeed, only legally defensible decision," said Kyle Tisdel, a program director for Western Environmental Law Center (WELC). "Necessary safeguards and analysis must be completed before any further leasing and development of the areas treasured landscapes can continue in compliance with the law."

March 11. A coalition of environmental groups including WELC, WildEarth Guardians and the Navajo organization Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (Diné CARE) filed suit against the BLM and the U.S. Department of the Interior to prevent fracking from harming Chaco Canyon, the site of numerous ancestral Puebloan ruins and Navajo communities.

New York

December 17. About a month after his re-election, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a statewide ban on fracking, citing health risks. The announcement made New York the second state in the country after Vermont to ban fracking. The decision, which ended years of debate in the Empire State, was by most accounts the biggest environmental story in the United States in 2014, and puts pressure on other states to consider similar bans.

"I've never had anyone say to me, I believe fracking is great," said Cuomo. "Not a single person in those communities. What I get is, I have no alternative but fracking."

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, called the move "a vindication for communities around the country that have been hit hard by unconventional natural gas production."

North Carolina

March 17. On the first day natural gas drilling permits could have been legally accepted in North Carolina, a group of anti-fracking state legislators called for a moratorium.

"We’ve been promised over the last five years that North Carolina would have the nation’s toughest fracking rules, and here we are at zero hour, and we do not have those rules," said Senator Mike Woodard (D-Durham). "The rules are simply insufficient for us to move forward with the issuing of permits."

Ohio

March 18. In a rare moment of bipartisanship, Ohio's normally polarized House of Representatives voted unanimously to ban fracking in state parks. While activists applauded the move, Ohio Sierra Club director Jen Miller said her group "will continue to work tirelessly to defend all state lands from industrial activities like fracking until they are set aside for generations to come, which starts with repealing bills like HB 133 altogether."

Oregon

March 12. The Oregon Community Rights Network (OCRN) launched a campaign to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2016 ballot that will affirm the right to local self-government in a move that would help anti-fracking activists in the state. If ratified, the amendment would grant legal rights to communities and even natural environments that can be violated.

The initiative is joins a growing local-rights movement around the country that is frustrating oil and gas companies. Mary Geddry, a representative with OCRN, noted that more than 200 communities across the U.S. have passed ordinances protecting local rights. "Only nine have been challenged in court," she said.

Pennsylvania

January 29. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf fulfilled a campaign promise and signed an executive order reinstating a moratorium on fracking in the state's public lands, protecting about a million acres that sit on the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation.

Texas

December 25. Anti-fracking activist Cathy McMullen, who started the nonprofit Denton Drilling Awareness Group that launched a petition to enact a citywide fracking ban, was named a finalist for the 2014 Texan of the Year Award by Dallas Morning News. This followed an Election Day in which voters passed a ballot initiative making Denton, located near the birthplace of fracking, the first city in Texas to pass a fracking ban.

March 23. Documentary filmmaker and Denton resident Garrett Graham released a new trailer for Don't Frack with Denton, his forthcoming film that tells the story of "how one tenacious Texas town managed to upstage the oil and gas industry with the power of music and community organizing."

Utah

March 18. WildEarth Guardians filed an appeal challenging BLM's plan to auction off more than 15,000 acres of public land in southern Utah to fracking companies. A 2014 report by WildEarth Guardians found that the carbon emission cost from oil and gas produced from public lands could exceed $50 billion.

Looking Ahead

While local fracking battles continue to rage around the nation, there has been interesting activity on the federal level, beyond the recent announcement from the White House.

House bill H.R. 5844, the Protect Our Public Lands Act seeks to amend the Mineral Leasing Act to prohibit a lessee from conducting any activity under the lease for fracking purposes. It was introduced in early December by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) during the last session of Congress and there are plans to reintroduce the bill in the current session.

On March 18, representatives Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Chris Gibson (R-NY), Jared Polis (D-CO) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the so-called Frack Pack, a set of five bills that aim to close loopholes in environmental laws that have been used by oil and gas companies to frack without proper oversight.

While state and local anti-fracking measures and federal bills to curb fracking have been making headlines, for fracktivists the big enchilada is a national ban.

"Communities that have already suffered from fracking, like Longmont, Colorado, are rising up to pass local bans," said Miranda Carter, a spokesperson at Food & Water Watch. "But we need to protect every community in the country by calling for a national ban on fracking: to slow or stop the process where it's already happening, and elsewhere, to prevent it before it starts."

From the aggressive anti-fracking moves in Maryland to a statewide ban in New York, the anti-fracking movement is alive and well.

The nation's first federal regulations on fracking, unveiled by the Obama administration last week, sparked immediate criticism from leading anti-fracking activists.

Americans Against Fracking, a coalition of 250 environmental and liberal groups that includes Greenpeace, 350.org, MoveOn.org, CREDO, Food & Water Watch, Rainforest Action Network and Friends of the Earth, issued a statement characterizing the new rules—meant chiefly to reduce the threat of fracking-related water contamination—as "toothless."

Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, who serves on the Americans Against Fracking advisory board, said that Obama's fracking regulations "are nothing more than a giveaway to the oil and gas industry." The group's goal is a complete fracking ban on federal land, where as many as 100,00 oil and gas wells have been drilled.

The new rules apply only to oil and gas drilling on federal lands, which represent about 25 percent of the national fossil fuel output and only some 10 percent of the nation's fracking. The rules don't apply to drilling on private or state-owned land. Currently, fracking occurs in 22 states.

Since states are responsible for regulating most of the fracking in the U.S., the anti-fracking battlefield—a patchwork of communities around the nation taking a stand to protect their air, water and soil–is understandably a bit fractured. With that in mind, here's a brief look around the country at some recent fracktivist highlights at the state and local level.

February 24. Bolstered by an admission by California state regulators that oil companies are disposing toxic waste into protected aquifers in violation of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, more than 150 environmental and community groups filed a legal petition urging the governor to use his emergency powers to place a moratorium on fracking.

March 20. California state Senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) and other lawmakers sent a letter to Gov. Jerry Brown urging him to "stop illegal injection into non-exempt aquifers" to protect the state's water from oil waste.

Colorado

February 24. Coloradans Against Fracking activists crashed a state oil and gas task force meeting, launching a campaign for a statewide fracking ban. "Our primary goal is to convince Governor Hickenlooper to ban fracking," said Karen Dike, a member of the new coalition. He can do that with an executive order."

March 18. WildEarth Guardians filed an appeal to halt plans by the Bureau of Land Management to open up 36,000 acres of public lands along the Front Range of Colorado to fracking.

"Climate denial at the Interior Department is fueling a fracking rush on our public lands and undermining our nation's efforts to rein in carbon pollution," said Jeremy Nichols of WildEarth Guardians.

Maryland

March 24. Maryland's House of Delegates passed a bill to ban fracking for three years by a veto-proof 94 to 45. However, it's unclear whether HB 449, currently under review in the state's Senate Committee on Education, Health and Environmental Affairs, has enough support in the Senate to become a law.

March 24. The Senate voted 29 to 17 in favor of a bill holding energy companies financially liable for injury, death or property laws caused by their fracking activities.

Together these measures mark the legislature's most aggressive action to curb fracking in the state.

New Mexico

December 30. The BLM announced it was deferring the issuance of five Navajo allotment parcels for fracking near Chaco Canyon, a World Heritage site, in response to a protest filed by a coalition of environmentalists and watchdog groups demanding a suspension of fracking on public lands in the northwest region of the state.

"Deferring these parcels was the right, and indeed, only legally defensible decision," said Kyle Tisdel, a program director for Western Environmental Law Center (WELC). "Necessary safeguards and analysis must be completed before any further leasing and development of the areas treasured landscapes can continue in compliance with the law."

March 11. A coalition of environmental groups including WELC, WildEarth Guardians and the Navajo organization Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment (Diné CARE) filed suit against the BLM and the U.S. Department of the Interior to prevent fracking from harming Chaco Canyon, the site of numerous ancestral Puebloan ruins and Navajo communities.

New York

December 17. About a month after his re-election, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a statewide ban on fracking, citing health risks. The announcement made New York the second state in the country after Vermont to ban fracking. The decision, which ended years of debate in the Empire State, was by most accounts the biggest environmental story in the United States in 2014, and puts pressure on other states to consider similar bans.

"I've never had anyone say to me, I believe fracking is great," said Cuomo. "Not a single person in those communities. What I get is, I have no alternative but fracking."

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, called the move "a vindication for communities around the country that have been hit hard by unconventional natural gas production."

North Carolina

March 17. On the first day natural gas drilling permits could have been legally accepted in North Carolina, a group of anti-fracking state legislators called for a moratorium.

"We’ve been promised over the last five years that North Carolina would have the nation’s toughest fracking rules, and here we are at zero hour, and we do not have those rules," said Senator Mike Woodard (D-Durham). "The rules are simply insufficient for us to move forward with the issuing of permits."

Ohio

March 18. In a rare moment of bipartisanship, Ohio's normally polarized House of Representatives voted unanimously to ban fracking in state parks. While activists applauded the move, Ohio Sierra Club director Jen Miller said her group "will continue to work tirelessly to defend all state lands from industrial activities like fracking until they are set aside for generations to come, which starts with repealing bills like HB 133 altogether."

Oregon

March 12. The Oregon Community Rights Network (OCRN) launched a campaign to put a constitutional amendment on the November 2016 ballot that will affirm the right to local self-government in a move that would help anti-fracking activists in the state. If ratified, the amendment would grant legal rights to communities and even natural environments that can be violated.

The initiative is joins a growing local-rights movement around the country that is frustrating oil and gas companies. Mary Geddry, a representative with OCRN, noted that more than 200 communities across the U.S. have passed ordinances protecting local rights. "Only nine have been challenged in court," she said.

Pennsylvania

January 29. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf fulfilled a campaign promise and signed an executive order reinstating a moratorium on fracking in the state's public lands, protecting about a million acres that sit on the natural gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation.

Texas

December 25. Anti-fracking activist Cathy McMullen, who started the nonprofit Denton Drilling Awareness Group that launched a petition to enact a citywide fracking ban, was named a finalist for the 2014 Texan of the Year Award by Dallas Morning News. This followed an Election Day in which voters passed a ballot initiative making Denton, located near the birthplace of fracking, the first city in Texas to pass a fracking ban.

March 23. Documentary filmmaker and Denton resident Garrett Graham released a new trailer for Don't Frack with Denton, his forthcoming film that tells the story of "how one tenacious Texas town managed to upstage the oil and gas industry with the power of music and community organizing."

Utah

March 18. WildEarth Guardians filed an appeal challenging BLM's plan to auction off more than 15,000 acres of public land in southern Utah to fracking companies. A 2014 report by WildEarth Guardians found that the carbon emission cost from oil and gas produced from public lands could exceed $50 billion.

Looking Ahead

While local fracking battles continue to rage around the nation, there has been interesting activity on the federal level, beyond the recent announcement from the White House.

House bill H.R. 5844, the Protect Our Public Lands Act seeks to amend the Mineral Leasing Act to prohibit a lessee from conducting any activity under the lease for fracking purposes. It was introduced in early December by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) during the last session of Congress and there are plans to reintroduce the bill in the current session.

On March 18, representatives Matt Cartwright (D-PA), Diana DeGette (D-CO), Chris Gibson (R-NY), Jared Polis (D-CO) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the so-called Frack Pack, a set of five bills that aim to close loopholes in environmental laws that have been used by oil and gas companies to frack without proper oversight.

While state and local anti-fracking measures and federal bills to curb fracking have been making headlines, for fracktivists the big enchilada is a national ban.

"Communities that have already suffered from fracking, like Longmont, Colorado, are rising up to pass local bans," said Miranda Carter, a spokesperson at Food & Water Watch. "But we need to protect every community in the country by calling for a national ban on fracking: to slow or stop the process where it's already happening, and elsewhere, to prevent it before it starts."

Years ago, I was in a coffee shop and overheard the following conversation between two fathers sitting at the table next to me. As I listened, it became clear they both had children in the sixth grade. One of the men said, with a downcast expression on his face, “Dan hates school. He drags his feet onto the bus every single day. He hates math. He says there’s no point to it. He thinks English is boring. There isn’t one part of the day he looks forward to.”

The other guy scrunched up his face skeptically. “What’s that got to do with anything? He doesn’t need to like it. He just needs to do it. I mean, jeez, it’s not a birthday party. They’re going because they gotta be ready.”

His friend tilted his head a little. “Ready? Ready for what? ” “Ready to make something of themselves. It’s a snake pit out there. I don’t know about you, but I want Rudy to have a leg up. And if he thinks I’m gonna pay for some fruity-tooty college, he’s got another think coming. There’s a reason for all this schooling. It’s not just so he can feel good.”

Nor is it just parents who think that education is first and foremost a path to a job. Many of our nation’s most ardent advocates for education have made their case by showing that schooling pays off, both for individuals and for society.

When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York City in January 2014, he quickly proposed making early childhood programs available to all children in the city. His concern reflected his progressive values and an understanding (long overdue on the part of politicians) that a good social and intellectual environment in early childhood is key to healthy development. As soon as de Blasio put forth his plan, he ran up against intense opposition. But what really stood out in the first days of this political conflict was how the newspapers covered the issue. The first articles describing de Blasio’s proposal and the opposition to it said virtually nothing about actual children—what their daily lives were like with and without good care. Instead, the articles discussed the economic and political ramifications of the proposal—what might be gained in the long run if the city provided day care to its youngest inhabitants. Reading those accounts, you would never know anything about the real little boys and girls who were or were not eating, napping, being read to, playing freely in safe and pleasant places, getting their needs met by kind adults, and enjoying their days. Our somewhat single-minded focus on education as a means to a financial end, rather than on children themselves, evokes a much earlier time when children were viewed primarily in terms of their financial utility.

In 1729 Jonathan Swift proposed a solution to the terrible poverty plaguing Ireland, with the long and expressive title A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. In it, Swift suggested that the people of Ireland could kill two birds with one stone by eating their babies. That way, he argued, they would both have an endless source of food and cut down on the population of those needing to be fed. Moreover, he added, it would be good for the restaurant business.

His satire seems ludicrous. Who would eat their children? Who would sacrifice the well-being of children for the well-being of the adult community? Only a society that hates its young. On the face of it, such a view seems opposite to the one we hold in the United States at the dawn of the twenty-first century. We bubble over with concern about children. This can be seen in the abundance of child care information, educational products, clothing lines, healthy menu plans for children, and media featuring cute children and offering advice about how to be the best possible parent. We appear as if we are a society obsessed with children. But actions speak louder than words. And just like the adults mocked by Swift, adults in the United States today neglect the well-being of children, particularly other people’s children.

We allow children to be served food that will make them sick, both at home and at school. We tolerate the fact that millions of children have no access to good day care. Employers force parents back to work soon after the birth of a child, preventing them from spending essential time at home with their new babies. Perhaps most paradoxically, our educational system forces many children to spend their days in crowded and unpleasant classrooms in unsafe school buildings, encountering boredom, constriction, harshness, and disregard. So Swift’s satire is a bit more relevant than it might seem at first blush.

Disregard for children’s daily well-being expresses itself in other less direct but no less potent ways. For example, we encourage our least qualified graduates to go into teaching and discourage our most qualified from doing so. Soon after I got my doctorate in developmental psychology, I applied for a job teaching second grade. The principal looked at my resume and asked, “Aren’t you overqualified to teach little kids? ” Many of my students at Williams College tell me that their relatives beg them not to become schoolteachers, because it would be a waste of a stellar education.

Taken together, all of these facts about the lives of young children suggest that we care little about the daily joys and sorrows of our youngest citizens. Public discourse about children is usually framed in terms of what will happen when they are adults, and those outcomes are usually framed in economic terms. But this long-term connection between early childhood and economic outcomes need not, and should not, preclude a concern for what young children actually feel, think, and do. Money in the future should not obscure well-being in the present.

Our tunnel-vision emphasis on the importance of money has led to another pernicious problem. It has fueled an insidious two-tiered vision of education, in which there is one kind of school for the needy and another kind for the masters of the universe. Often it is the rich who promote such a view, thinly disguised as concern for the poor. In 2010 I wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which I argued that we should replace the ever-growing laundry list of skills and information we demand of our classrooms with a simpler, shorter list. I argued that children needed time to play, to think, and to talk. The reaction to the piece was overwhelming. Some readers loved my argument and others hated it. One of the most vehement responses came from a venture capitalist, someone who had contributed significant time and money to supporting a group of charter schools in the city where he lived. He ranted about me in his blog, and I discovered how angry he was when the Internet lit up with responses from teachers across the country who were gleeful that I had made this man so mad. When I wrote to him to correct some misinformation, he wrote back to tell me that while the kind of school I had in mind would be great for his three girls, it would never do for “these other kids”—poor kids, the ones he was trying to help.

Over the past hundred years we have, without exactly meaning to, stretched schools in two directions at once. On one hand, we have demanded with greater and greater urgency that our schools lift up the bottom sector of society, bringing our poorest children, those with the greatest social, emotional, and intellectual deficits, into the middle class. While we’ve tinkered with schools to make them ever more able to do this heavy lifting, we have also demanded that our students learn more and more skills at the upper level—not just the basics of reading and computation but also literary analysis, algebra, history, computer literacy, public speaking, a second language, and the scientific method. Some people have argued that we should shelve one of these purposes and concentrate on the other. Others have claimed that we need two kinds of schools—one for those at the bottom, who need lifting, and the other for those at the top, who need stretching. In both cases, we have been misguided.

By allowing the pursuit of money to guide our educational practices, we have miseducated everyone. We are so hell-bent on teaching disadvantaged children skills (both academic ones, such as reading, and social ones, such as obeying rules) that will lead to a job that we fail to teach them the pleasure of being part of a literate community, how to make their work meaningful, or how to draw strength from the group—skills that might offer them a satisfying life. Just as bad is that middle-class and privileged children are pushed to view every stage of their schooling as a platform for some future accomplishment ending in wealth. This deprives them of the chance to figure out what they really care about, how to think about complex topics with open minds, and how to find a sense of purpose in life.

But there is an alternative. Some of the most intractable problems in schools could be solved if we replaced money with a different goal, one that would be good for all children, both now and in their futures—the goal of well-being, or what some people know as happiness. As psychologists and philosophers have been pointing out for centuries, humans spend their lives seeking happiness. And most parents, deep down, want that for their children above all else. The capacity for real happiness (as opposed to transitory pleasures) is what separates us from other species and makes the gift of the human mind so precious. School should be a place where children feel joy, satisfaction, purpose, and a sense of human connection, and where they acquire the habits and skills that will enable them to lead happy lives as adults.

Ironically, happiness seems like a dangerous aspiration to many people. Not long ago, I gave a talk in small town on the East Coast. I was arguing that the first task of high school principals and teachers is to make their schools places teenagers would want to be. A senior attending the local school came up to me at the end of the talk and said, “Most of my friends spend all day waiting to be done, so they can leave. It makes no sense.” He hesitated, then added with a wry smile, “Well, maybe it does. Maybe deep down a lot of people believe that if kids don’t enjoy school very much, they’ll be better prepared to be miserable later on in life.” He’s not far off. Mark Bauerlein, of Emory University, has argued that it is a mistake to worry too much about student engagement in high school. He reasons, just as the high schooler I talked to had surmised, that since students will likely have to endure a great deal of boredom in adult life, we’d do better to prepare them for boredom than to try to make school interesting to them. It’s a tempting thought experiment: why not work hard to help children and teenagers become really good at tolerating tedium, irrelevance, and frustration?

Our educational system, however unwittingly, has been guided by the premise that boredom in school is an acceptable price to pay for future success as a bored adult. This approach rarely works.

Far too many children in this country spend their energy warding off the tedium, frustration, and constriction of school. At worst they end up dropping out. At best they simply put their heads down and try to get through it unscathed; sometimes this means getting through school without being damaged, but just as often it means successfully resisting new ideas, new experiences, or any fundamental change in outlook. Even when it works, though, it’s a poor solution. Research suggests that even when students can tolerate sixteen years of suppressing their needs in the interest of future wages, things don’t turn out well. They become dissatisfied adults. Which of us hopes for that for our child?

Years ago, I was in a coffee shop and overheard the following conversation between two fathers sitting at the table next to me. As I listened, it became clear they both had children in the sixth grade. One of the men said, with a downcast expression on his face, “Dan hates school. He drags his feet onto the bus every single day. He hates math. He says there’s no point to it. He thinks English is boring. There isn’t one part of the day he looks forward to.”

The other guy scrunched up his face skeptically. “What’s that got to do with anything? He doesn’t need to like it. He just needs to do it. I mean, jeez, it’s not a birthday party. They’re going because they gotta be ready.”

His friend tilted his head a little. “Ready? Ready for what? ” “Ready to make something of themselves. It’s a snake pit out there. I don’t know about you, but I want Rudy to have a leg up. And if he thinks I’m gonna pay for some fruity-tooty college, he’s got another think coming. There’s a reason for all this schooling. It’s not just so he can feel good.”

Nor is it just parents who think that education is first and foremost a path to a job. Many of our nation’s most ardent advocates for education have made their case by showing that schooling pays off, both for individuals and for society.

When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York City in January 2014, he quickly proposed making early childhood programs available to all children in the city. His concern reflected his progressive values and an understanding (long overdue on the part of politicians) that a good social and intellectual environment in early childhood is key to healthy development. As soon as de Blasio put forth his plan, he ran up against intense opposition. But what really stood out in the first days of this political conflict was how the newspapers covered the issue. The first articles describing de Blasio’s proposal and the opposition to it said virtually nothing about actual children—what their daily lives were like with and without good care. Instead, the articles discussed the economic and political ramifications of the proposal—what might be gained in the long run if the city provided day care to its youngest inhabitants. Reading those accounts, you would never know anything about the real little boys and girls who were or were not eating, napping, being read to, playing freely in safe and pleasant places, getting their needs met by kind adults, and enjoying their days. Our somewhat single-minded focus on education as a means to a financial end, rather than on children themselves, evokes a much earlier time when children were viewed primarily in terms of their financial utility.

In 1729 Jonathan Swift proposed a solution to the terrible poverty plaguing Ireland, with the long and expressive title A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public. In it, Swift suggested that the people of Ireland could kill two birds with one stone by eating their babies. That way, he argued, they would both have an endless source of food and cut down on the population of those needing to be fed. Moreover, he added, it would be good for the restaurant business.

His satire seems ludicrous. Who would eat their children? Who would sacrifice the well-being of children for the well-being of the adult community? Only a society that hates its young. On the face of it, such a view seems opposite to the one we hold in the United States at the dawn of the twenty-first century. We bubble over with concern about children. This can be seen in the abundance of child care information, educational products, clothing lines, healthy menu plans for children, and media featuring cute children and offering advice about how to be the best possible parent. We appear as if we are a society obsessed with children. But actions speak louder than words. And just like the adults mocked by Swift, adults in the United States today neglect the well-being of children, particularly other people’s children.

We allow children to be served food that will make them sick, both at home and at school. We tolerate the fact that millions of children have no access to good day care. Employers force parents back to work soon after the birth of a child, preventing them from spending essential time at home with their new babies. Perhaps most paradoxically, our educational system forces many children to spend their days in crowded and unpleasant classrooms in unsafe school buildings, encountering boredom, constriction, harshness, and disregard. So Swift’s satire is a bit more relevant than it might seem at first blush.

Disregard for children’s daily well-being expresses itself in other less direct but no less potent ways. For example, we encourage our least qualified graduates to go into teaching and discourage our most qualified from doing so. Soon after I got my doctorate in developmental psychology, I applied for a job teaching second grade. The principal looked at my resume and asked, “Aren’t you overqualified to teach little kids? ” Many of my students at Williams College tell me that their relatives beg them not to become schoolteachers, because it would be a waste of a stellar education.

Taken together, all of these facts about the lives of young children suggest that we care little about the daily joys and sorrows of our youngest citizens. Public discourse about children is usually framed in terms of what will happen when they are adults, and those outcomes are usually framed in economic terms. But this long-term connection between early childhood and economic outcomes need not, and should not, preclude a concern for what young children actually feel, think, and do. Money in the future should not obscure well-being in the present.

Our tunnel-vision emphasis on the importance of money has led to another pernicious problem. It has fueled an insidious two-tiered vision of education, in which there is one kind of school for the needy and another kind for the masters of the universe. Often it is the rich who promote such a view, thinly disguised as concern for the poor. In 2010 I wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which I argued that we should replace the ever-growing laundry list of skills and information we demand of our classrooms with a simpler, shorter list. I argued that children needed time to play, to think, and to talk. The reaction to the piece was overwhelming. Some readers loved my argument and others hated it. One of the most vehement responses came from a venture capitalist, someone who had contributed significant time and money to supporting a group of charter schools in the city where he lived. He ranted about me in his blog, and I discovered how angry he was when the Internet lit up with responses from teachers across the country who were gleeful that I had made this man so mad. When I wrote to him to correct some misinformation, he wrote back to tell me that while the kind of school I had in mind would be great for his three girls, it would never do for “these other kids”—poor kids, the ones he was trying to help.

Over the past hundred years we have, without exactly meaning to, stretched schools in two directions at once. On one hand, we have demanded with greater and greater urgency that our schools lift up the bottom sector of society, bringing our poorest children, those with the greatest social, emotional, and intellectual deficits, into the middle class. While we’ve tinkered with schools to make them ever more able to do this heavy lifting, we have also demanded that our students learn more and more skills at the upper level—not just the basics of reading and computation but also literary analysis, algebra, history, computer literacy, public speaking, a second language, and the scientific method. Some people have argued that we should shelve one of these purposes and concentrate on the other. Others have claimed that we need two kinds of schools—one for those at the bottom, who need lifting, and the other for those at the top, who need stretching. In both cases, we have been misguided.

By allowing the pursuit of money to guide our educational practices, we have miseducated everyone. We are so hell-bent on teaching disadvantaged children skills (both academic ones, such as reading, and social ones, such as obeying rules) that will lead to a job that we fail to teach them the pleasure of being part of a literate community, how to make their work meaningful, or how to draw strength from the group—skills that might offer them a satisfying life. Just as bad is that middle-class and privileged children are pushed to view every stage of their schooling as a platform for some future accomplishment ending in wealth. This deprives them of the chance to figure out what they really care about, how to think about complex topics with open minds, and how to find a sense of purpose in life.

But there is an alternative. Some of the most intractable problems in schools could be solved if we replaced money with a different goal, one that would be good for all children, both now and in their futures—the goal of well-being, or what some people know as happiness. As psychologists and philosophers have been pointing out for centuries, humans spend their lives seeking happiness. And most parents, deep down, want that for their children above all else. The capacity for real happiness (as opposed to transitory pleasures) is what separates us from other species and makes the gift of the human mind so precious. School should be a place where children feel joy, satisfaction, purpose, and a sense of human connection, and where they acquire the habits and skills that will enable them to lead happy lives as adults.

Ironically, happiness seems like a dangerous aspiration to many people. Not long ago, I gave a talk in small town on the East Coast. I was arguing that the first task of high school principals and teachers is to make their schools places teenagers would want to be. A senior attending the local school came up to me at the end of the talk and said, “Most of my friends spend all day waiting to be done, so they can leave. It makes no sense.” He hesitated, then added with a wry smile, “Well, maybe it does. Maybe deep down a lot of people believe that if kids don’t enjoy school very much, they’ll be better prepared to be miserable later on in life.” He’s not far off. Mark Bauerlein, of Emory University, has argued that it is a mistake to worry too much about student engagement in high school. He reasons, just as the high schooler I talked to had surmised, that since students will likely have to endure a great deal of boredom in adult life, we’d do better to prepare them for boredom than to try to make school interesting to them. It’s a tempting thought experiment: why not work hard to help children and teenagers become really good at tolerating tedium, irrelevance, and frustration?

Our educational system, however unwittingly, has been guided by the premise that boredom in school is an acceptable price to pay for future success as a bored adult. This approach rarely works.

Far too many children in this country spend their energy warding off the tedium, frustration, and constriction of school. At worst they end up dropping out. At best they simply put their heads down and try to get through it unscathed; sometimes this means getting through school without being damaged, but just as often it means successfully resisting new ideas, new experiences, or any fundamental change in outlook. Even when it works, though, it’s a poor solution. Research suggests that even when students can tolerate sixteen years of suppressing their needs in the interest of future wages, things don’t turn out well. They become dissatisfied adults. Which of us hopes for that for our child?

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/are-we-heading-towards-new-global-financial-crisisAre We Heading Towards a New Global Financial Crisis?http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87964279/0/alternet~Are-We-Heading-Towards-a-New-Global-Financial-Crisis

Next to nothing has been done about countries that can’t repay their debts.

Greek ministers are spending this weekend, almost five grinding years since Athens was first bailed out, wrangling over the details of the spending cuts and economic reforms they have drawn up to appease their creditors.

As the recriminations fly between Europe’s capitals, campaigners are warning that the global community has failed to learn the lessons of the Greek debt crisis – or even of Argentina’s default in 2001, the consequences of which are still being contested furiously in courts on both sides of the Atlantic.

As Janet Yellen’s Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, boosting the value of the dollar, while the plunging price of crude puts intense pressure on the finances of oil-exporting countries, there are growing fears of a new debt crisis in the making.

Ann Pettifor of Prime Economics, who foreshadowed the credit crunch in her 2003 book The Coming First World Debt Crisis, says: “We’re going to have another financial crisis. Brazil’s already in great trouble with the strength of the dollar; I dread to think what’s happening in South Africa; then there’s Malaysia. We’re back to where we were, and that for me is really frightening.”

Since the aftershocks of the global financial crisis of 2008 died away, the world’s policymakers have spent countless hours rewriting the banking rulebook and rethinking monetary policy. But next to nothing has been done about the question of what to do about countries that can’t repay their debts, or how to stop them getting into trouble in the first place.

Developing countries are using the UN to demand a change in the way sovereign defaults are dealt with. Led by Bolivian ambassador to the UN Sacha Sergio Llorenti, they are calling for a bankruptcy process akin to the Chapter 11 procedure for companies to be applied to governments.

Unctad, the UN’s Geneva-based trade and investment arm, has been working for several years to draw up a “roadmap” for sovereign debt resolution. It recommends a series of principles, including a moratorium on repayments while a solution is negotiated; the imposition of currency controls to prevent capital fleeing the troubled country; and continued lending by the IMF to prevent the kind of existential financial threat that roils world markets and causes severe economic hardship.

If a new set of rules could be established, Unctad believes, “they should help prevent financial meltdown in countries facing difficulties servicing their external obligations, which often results in a loss of market confidence, currency collapse and drastic interest rates hikes, inflicting serious damage on public and private balance sheets and leading to large losses in output and employment and a sharp increase in poverty”.

It calls for a once-and-for-all write-off, instead of the piecemeal Greek-style approach involving harsh terms and conditions that knock the economy off course and can ultimately make the debt even harder to repay. The threat of a genuine default of this kind could also help to constrain reckless lending by the private sector in the first place.

However, when these proposals were put to the UN general assembly last September, a number of developed countries, including the UK and the US, voted against it, claiming the UN was the wrong forum to discuss the proposal, which is anathema to powerful financial institutions.

Pettifor shares some of the UK and US’s scepticism. “The problem for me is that the UN has no leverage here,” she says. “It can make these moralistic pronouncements but ultimately it’s the IMF and the governments that make the decisions.”

Nevertheless, Llorenti has been touring the world’s capitals making the case for change, and hopes to bring the issue back for fresh discussions next month.

And while the debate rages, developing countries have been taking advantage of rock-bottom interest rates and the cheap money created by quantitative easing to stack up billions in new debt.

Using recently released World Bank data, the Jubilee Debt Campaign calculates that in 2013 alone – the latest period for which figures are available – borrowing by developing countries was up 40% to $17.3bn.

Brazil’s economy is likely to be seriously tested as the greenback rises; Turkey, Malaysia and Chile have large dollar-denominated debts and sliding currencies; and a string of African countries face sharp rises in debt repayments. Ghana and Zambia have already had to turn to the IMF to ask for help. It’s as if, as Pettifor warns, “absolutely nothing has changed since the crisis”.

Next to nothing has been done about countries that can’t repay their debts.

Greek ministers are spending this weekend, almost five grinding years since Athens was first bailed out, wrangling over the details of the spending cuts and economic reforms they have drawn up to appease their creditors.

As the recriminations fly between Europe’s capitals, campaigners are warning that the global community has failed to learn the lessons of the Greek debt crisis – or even of Argentina’s default in 2001, the consequences of which are still being contested furiously in courts on both sides of the Atlantic.

As Janet Yellen’s Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, boosting the value of the dollar, while the plunging price of crude puts intense pressure on the finances of oil-exporting countries, there are growing fears of a new debt crisis in the making.

Ann Pettifor of Prime Economics, who foreshadowed the credit crunch in her 2003 book The Coming First World Debt Crisis, says: “We’re going to have another financial crisis. Brazil’s already in great trouble with the strength of the dollar; I dread to think what’s happening in South Africa; then there’s Malaysia. We’re back to where we were, and that for me is really frightening.”

Since the aftershocks of the global financial crisis of 2008 died away, the world’s policymakers have spent countless hours rewriting the banking rulebook and rethinking monetary policy. But next to nothing has been done about the question of what to do about countries that can’t repay their debts, or how to stop them getting into trouble in the first place.

Developing countries are using the UN to demand a change in the way sovereign defaults are dealt with. Led by Bolivian ambassador to the UN Sacha Sergio Llorenti, they are calling for a bankruptcy process akin to the Chapter 11 procedure for companies to be applied to governments.

Unctad, the UN’s Geneva-based trade and investment arm, has been working for several years to draw up a “roadmap” for sovereign debt resolution. It recommends a series of principles, including a moratorium on repayments while a solution is negotiated; the imposition of currency controls to prevent capital fleeing the troubled country; and continued lending by the IMF to prevent the kind of existential financial threat that roils world markets and causes severe economic hardship.

If a new set of rules could be established, Unctad believes, “they should help prevent financial meltdown in countries facing difficulties servicing their external obligations, which often results in a loss of market confidence, currency collapse and drastic interest rates hikes, inflicting serious damage on public and private balance sheets and leading to large losses in output and employment and a sharp increase in poverty”.

It calls for a once-and-for-all write-off, instead of the piecemeal Greek-style approach involving harsh terms and conditions that knock the economy off course and can ultimately make the debt even harder to repay. The threat of a genuine default of this kind could also help to constrain reckless lending by the private sector in the first place.

However, when these proposals were put to the UN general assembly last September, a number of developed countries, including the UK and the US, voted against it, claiming the UN was the wrong forum to discuss the proposal, which is anathema to powerful financial institutions.

Pettifor shares some of the UK and US’s scepticism. “The problem for me is that the UN has no leverage here,” she says. “It can make these moralistic pronouncements but ultimately it’s the IMF and the governments that make the decisions.”

Nevertheless, Llorenti has been touring the world’s capitals making the case for change, and hopes to bring the issue back for fresh discussions next month.

And while the debate rages, developing countries have been taking advantage of rock-bottom interest rates and the cheap money created by quantitative easing to stack up billions in new debt.

Using recently released World Bank data, the Jubilee Debt Campaign calculates that in 2013 alone – the latest period for which figures are available – borrowing by developing countries was up 40% to $17.3bn.

Brazil’s economy is likely to be seriously tested as the greenback rises; Turkey, Malaysia and Chile have large dollar-denominated debts and sliding currencies; and a string of African countries face sharp rises in debt repayments. Ghana and Zambia have already had to turn to the IMF to ask for help. It’s as if, as Pettifor warns, “absolutely nothing has changed since the crisis”.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/labor/another-dead-factory-worker-key-apple-supplier-does-company-even-careAnother Dead Factory Worker for Key Apple Supplier: Does the Company Even Care? http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87964276/0/alternet~Another-Dead-Factory-Worker-for-Key-Apple-Supplier-Does-the-Company-Even-Care

What killed Tian Fulei?

Tian Fulei, a 26-year-old worker at a Chinese factory that makes the iPhone 6, was found dead in a dormitory on February 3. According to his family, Fulei had been working 12-hour days, seven days a week, during the months leading up to his death.

Fulei worked at Shanghai Pegatron, a major electronic supplier for Apple. Earlier this year, the New York City-based non-profit China Labor Watch (CLW) released a report detailing the company’s labor abuses. According to the report, workers typically put in 11-hour shifts for six days week and are paid $1.50 an hour. The employees are packed in 12-person dorms and if they don't complete three months of service at the company, the dispatch organization that got them hired will make a large deduction from their wages.

CLW investigators who carried out undercover sweeps of the factories counted 86 labor rights violations. After Pegatron became aware of a BBC expose that was being done on the company, it reduced weekly hours below 60, allowing Apple to tell the BBC that the weekly hour average was 55.

Fulei’s death was ruled sudden, but no autopsy was carried out, as his family are farmers in Shandong unable to afford any kind of independent investigation. Fulei’s sister, Tian Zhoumei, told Daily Mail Online that, “We heard a lot from him about overtime. The company is definitely at fault. He walked in there a healthy man...as a registered employee he had to pass a full body test.He last called on the morning of February 1...I don't remember him saying anything about being sick but he said he worked an extra two to two-and-a-half hours every day. So, around 12 hours a day.”

Pegatron initially offered the family 15,000 yuan as a “gesture,” but that amount was bumped to 80,000 after an intervention by authorities.

Kevin Slaten, program coordinator at CLW, told me Fulei's death symbolizes conditions at Pegatron. “We have confirmed six deaths of Pegatron Shanghai workers since 2013,” said Slaten, “though we have heard of others. All of the deaths were abnormal in nature.”

Apple increased its orders to Pegatron factories in 2013, while flaunting its “Supplier Responsibility” code of conduct standards, despite the company’s abuses. “To reduce the occurrence of more tragedies like these, Apple should invest more in labor in order to reduce overtime hours, prevent mandatory overtime, and raise workers' wages,” says Slaten. Apple has refused to comment on Fulei’s death.

Tian Fulei, a 26-year-old worker at a Chinese factory that makes the iPhone 6, was found dead in a dormitory on February 3. According to his family, Fulei had been working 12-hour days, seven days a week, during the months leading up to his death.

Fulei worked at Shanghai Pegatron, a major electronic supplier for Apple. Earlier this year, the New York City-based non-profit China Labor Watch (CLW) released a report detailing the company’s labor abuses. According to the report, workers typically put in 11-hour shifts for six days week and are paid $1.50 an hour. The employees are packed in 12-person dorms and if they don't complete three months of service at the company, the dispatch organization that got them hired will make a large deduction from their wages.

CLW investigators who carried out undercover sweeps of the factories counted 86 labor rights violations. After Pegatron became aware of a BBC expose that was being done on the company, it reduced weekly hours below 60, allowing Apple to tell the BBC that the weekly hour average was 55.

Fulei’s death was ruled sudden, but no autopsy was carried out, as his family are farmers in Shandong unable to afford any kind of independent investigation. Fulei’s sister, Tian Zhoumei, told Daily Mail Online that, “We heard a lot from him about overtime. The company is definitely at fault. He walked in there a healthy man...as a registered employee he had to pass a full body test.He last called on the morning of February 1...I don't remember him saying anything about being sick but he said he worked an extra two to two-and-a-half hours every day. So, around 12 hours a day.”

Pegatron initially offered the family 15,000 yuan as a “gesture,” but that amount was bumped to 80,000 after an intervention by authorities.

Kevin Slaten, program coordinator at CLW, told me Fulei's death symbolizes conditions at Pegatron. “We have confirmed six deaths of Pegatron Shanghai workers since 2013,” said Slaten, “though we have heard of others. All of the deaths were abnormal in nature.”

Apple increased its orders to Pegatron factories in 2013, while flaunting its “Supplier Responsibility” code of conduct standards, despite the company’s abuses. “To reduce the occurrence of more tragedies like these, Apple should invest more in labor in order to reduce overtime hours, prevent mandatory overtime, and raise workers' wages,” says Slaten. Apple has refused to comment on Fulei’s death.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/world/israel-only-going-change-its-horrific-behavior-if-outsiders-force-itIsrael Is Only Going to Change Its Horrific Behavior If Outsiders Force It tohttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87964280/0/alternet~Israel-Is-Only-Going-to-Change-Its-Horrific-Behavior-If-Outsiders-Force-It-to

For too long, the majority of the voices in the Jewish community have urged the treating of Israel with kid gloves.

Israel's recent election was a clarifying moment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appeal to Israelis' worst racist instincts worked. Between Netanyahu's declarations during the last week on the campaign trail that he has no interest in a peace agreement with Palestinians, and his horror at the act of Palestinian citizens of Israel voting, his political platform could not be more clear: It is anti-peace and based on Jewish nationalism at the expense of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Despite Netanyahu's attempt to walk back his comments after he won, there is little doubt that Israel's policies of expanding settlements, an ongoing siege of Gaza, periodic warfare and systematic discrimination will continue.

For many people, especially American Jews who express support for democratic ideals and are seriously committed to peace with Palestinians, the racist rhetoric and extreme positions Netanyahu was willing to deploy in the last days of the campaign uncomfortably highlighted ongoing Likud party policies. The Zionist Union was defined as an alternative "center left" that could offer a superficially new direction for Israelis tired of Netanyahu's belligerence toward anyone around the world who doesn't agree with him. But in substance, the Zionist Union did not actually offer policy positions that were much different in terms of the treatment of Palestinians both within and outside of the Green Line.

As openly offensive as Netanyahu is, he is not the only problem. Underlying his leadership is a systemic and society-wide problem of increasing support among Israelis for anti-democratic policies, including second-class citizenship for Palestinian citizens of Israel and complete control of the approximately 4.5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, who do not have any input over the government that has ultimate control over their territory.

For decades, Israel has delayed or obstructed constructive peace talks by claiming it had no partner for peace while continuing to expand settlement building and strengthening the infrastructure of occupation. Now, as Palestinian Authority senior officials noted, the world can't help but see that there is no partner for peace on the Israeli side.

Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf put it like this immediately after the election: "For years we have been hearing that Israel will either end the occupation or cease to be a democracy. Could it be that the Jewish public has made its choice?"

The question now for American Jews who express support for peace and democratic values is how to relate to an Israeli government which has openly declared itself against both. While major Jewish institutions, including the Jewish Federations of North America and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), congratulated Netanyahu for his win, others, like the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and American Jewish Committee, congratulated Israel for its fair election process. Noneof these pillars of the Jewish-American community showed even a moment's pause at the twisted values that won the election (though the ADL did praise Netanyahu's insincere apology to Palestinian citizens after the election).

So where does that leave the rest of us, who are dismayed by Israel's unequal treatment of its citizens and subjects? Jewish Voice for Peace has long held a theory of change that given the last 20 years of a fruitless peace process, external pressure from governments and civil society will be necessary for Israel to stop acting with impunity. That is why we endorse the call forBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as a system of accountability for Israel's blatant disregard for human rights.

The Obama administration is growing less willing to blindly protect Israel's every action. The administration is considering allowing measures to pressure Israel at the U.N. and other international bodies, where the U.S. has traditionally acted as a body block whenever Israel was faced with challenges to its actions. It is not yet clear if this is a serious threat, but that it is even surfacing shows that U.S. policies toward Israel may be significantly shifting.

For too long, the majority of the voices in the Jewish community have urged the treating of Israel with kid gloves, giving it the space and time to make its own decision to do the right thing. But that has only allowed Israel to entrench its system of occupation and control while its population becomes ever more right-wing and comfortable with the status quo. Whether for love of Israel, or simply love of universal human rights, we can no longer claim not to see Israel's positions as unacceptable, and therefore can't absolve ourselves of the necessity to support concrete steps to change its stance. Whether it is BDS, the International Criminal Court, U.S. economic military or economic aid, or other forms of non-violent pressure, it is time for consequences.

For too long, the majority of the voices in the Jewish community have urged the treating of Israel with kid gloves.

Israel's recent election was a clarifying moment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's appeal to Israelis' worst racist instincts worked. Between Netanyahu's declarations during the last week on the campaign trail that he has no interest in a peace agreement with Palestinians, and his horror at the act of Palestinian citizens of Israel voting, his political platform could not be more clear: It is anti-peace and based on Jewish nationalism at the expense of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Despite Netanyahu's attempt to walk back his comments after he won, there is little doubt that Israel's policies of expanding settlements, an ongoing siege of Gaza, periodic warfare and systematic discrimination will continue.

For many people, especially American Jews who express support for democratic ideals and are seriously committed to peace with Palestinians, the racist rhetoric and extreme positions Netanyahu was willing to deploy in the last days of the campaign uncomfortably highlighted ongoing Likud party policies. The Zionist Union was defined as an alternative "center left" that could offer a superficially new direction for Israelis tired of Netanyahu's belligerence toward anyone around the world who doesn't agree with him. But in substance, the Zionist Union did not actually offer policy positions that were much different in terms of the treatment of Palestinians both within and outside of the Green Line.

As openly offensive as Netanyahu is, he is not the only problem. Underlying his leadership is a systemic and society-wide problem of increasing support among Israelis for anti-democratic policies, including second-class citizenship for Palestinian citizens of Israel and complete control of the approximately 4.5 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, who do not have any input over the government that has ultimate control over their territory.

For decades, Israel has delayed or obstructed constructive peace talks by claiming it had no partner for peace while continuing to expand settlement building and strengthening the infrastructure of occupation. Now, as Palestinian Authority senior officials noted, the world can't help but see that there is no partner for peace on the Israeli side.

Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf put it like this immediately after the election: "For years we have been hearing that Israel will either end the occupation or cease to be a democracy. Could it be that the Jewish public has made its choice?"

The question now for American Jews who express support for peace and democratic values is how to relate to an Israeli government which has openly declared itself against both. While major Jewish institutions, including the Jewish Federations of North America and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), congratulated Netanyahu for his win, others, like the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and American Jewish Committee, congratulated Israel for its fair election process. Noneof these pillars of the Jewish-American community showed even a moment's pause at the twisted values that won the election (though the ADL did praise Netanyahu's insincere apology to Palestinian citizens after the election).

So where does that leave the rest of us, who are dismayed by Israel's unequal treatment of its citizens and subjects? Jewish Voice for Peace has long held a theory of change that given the last 20 years of a fruitless peace process, external pressure from governments and civil society will be necessary for Israel to stop acting with impunity. That is why we endorse the call forBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) as a system of accountability for Israel's blatant disregard for human rights.

The Obama administration is growing less willing to blindly protect Israel's every action. The administration is considering allowing measures to pressure Israel at the U.N. and other international bodies, where the U.S. has traditionally acted as a body block whenever Israel was faced with challenges to its actions. It is not yet clear if this is a serious threat, but that it is even surfacing shows that U.S. policies toward Israel may be significantly shifting.

For too long, the majority of the voices in the Jewish community have urged the treating of Israel with kid gloves, giving it the space and time to make its own decision to do the right thing. But that has only allowed Israel to entrench its system of occupation and control while its population becomes ever more right-wing and comfortable with the status quo. Whether for love of Israel, or simply love of universal human rights, we can no longer claim not to see Israel's positions as unacceptable, and therefore can't absolve ourselves of the necessity to support concrete steps to change its stance. Whether it is BDS, the International Criminal Court, U.S. economic military or economic aid, or other forms of non-violent pressure, it is time for consequences.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/whoops-indianas-anti-gay-religious-freedom-act-opens-door-first-church-cannabisWhoops: Indiana’s Anti-Gay ‘Religious Freedom’ Act Opens the Door For the First Church of Cannabishttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87964278/0/alternet~Whoops-Indiana%e2%80%99s-AntiGay-%e2%80%98Religious-Freedom%e2%80%99-Act-Opens-the-Door-For-the-First-Church-of-Cannabis

The law puts the state in an awkward position with those who profess to smoke pot as a religious sacrament.

In a classic case of “unintended consequences,” the recently signed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana may have opened the door for the establishment of the First Church of Cannabis in the Hoosier State.

While Governor Mike Pence (R) was holding a signing ceremony for the bill allowing businesses and individuals to deny services to gays on religious grounds or values, paperwork for the First Church of Cannabis Inc. was being filed with the Secretary of State’s office, reports RTV6.

Church founder Bill Levin announced on his Facebook page that the church’s registration has been approved, writing, “Status: Approved by Secretary of State of Indiana – “Congratulations your registration has been approved!” Now we begin to accomplish our goals of Love, Understanding, and Good Health.”

Levin is currently seeking $4.20 donations towards his non-profit church.

According to Indiana attorney and political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Indiana legislators, in their haste to protect the religious values and practices of their constituents, may have unwittingly put the state in an awkward position with those who profess to smoke pot as a religious sacrament.

Shabazz pointed out that it is still illegal to smoke pot in Indiana, but wrote, “I would argue that under RFRA, as long as you can show that reefer is part of your religious practices, you got a pretty good shot of getting off scot-free.”

Noting that RFRA supporters say the bill “only spells out a test as to whether a government mandate would unduly burden a person’s faith and the government has to articulate a compelling interest for that rule and how it would be carried out in the least restrictive manner,” Shabazz contends the law may tie the state’s hands.

“So, with that said, what ‘compelling interest’ would the state of Indiana have to prohibit me from using marijuana as part of my religious practice?” he asked. ” I would argue marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and wine used in religious ceremonies. Marijuana isn’t any more ‘addictive’ than alcohol and wine is used in some religious ceremonies. And marijuana isn’t any more of a ‘gateway’ drug than the wine used in a religious ceremony will make you go out and buy hard liquor. (At least not on Sunday.)”

Shabazz concluded, “I want a front row seat at the trial that we all know is going to happen when all this goes down.”

The law puts the state in an awkward position with those who profess to smoke pot as a religious sacrament.

In a classic case of “unintended consequences,” the recently signed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indiana may have opened the door for the establishment of the First Church of Cannabis in the Hoosier State.

While Governor Mike Pence (R) was holding a signing ceremony for the bill allowing businesses and individuals to deny services to gays on religious grounds or values, paperwork for the First Church of Cannabis Inc. was being filed with the Secretary of State’s office, reports RTV6.

Church founder Bill Levin announced on his Facebook page that the church’s registration has been approved, writing, “Status: Approved by Secretary of State of Indiana – “Congratulations your registration has been approved!” Now we begin to accomplish our goals of Love, Understanding, and Good Health.”

Levin is currently seeking $4.20 donations towards his non-profit church.

According to Indiana attorney and political commentator Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, Indiana legislators, in their haste to protect the religious values and practices of their constituents, may have unwittingly put the state in an awkward position with those who profess to smoke pot as a religious sacrament.

Shabazz pointed out that it is still illegal to smoke pot in Indiana, but wrote, “I would argue that under RFRA, as long as you can show that reefer is part of your religious practices, you got a pretty good shot of getting off scot-free.”

Noting that RFRA supporters say the bill “only spells out a test as to whether a government mandate would unduly burden a person’s faith and the government has to articulate a compelling interest for that rule and how it would be carried out in the least restrictive manner,” Shabazz contends the law may tie the state’s hands.

“So, with that said, what ‘compelling interest’ would the state of Indiana have to prohibit me from using marijuana as part of my religious practice?” he asked. ” I would argue marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and wine used in religious ceremonies. Marijuana isn’t any more ‘addictive’ than alcohol and wine is used in some religious ceremonies. And marijuana isn’t any more of a ‘gateway’ drug than the wine used in a religious ceremony will make you go out and buy hard liquor. (At least not on Sunday.)”

Shabazz concluded, “I want a front row seat at the trial that we all know is going to happen when all this goes down.”

Suspect was cooperating with cops when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

Toledo, OH — Police in Toledo will have a hard time building the trust of their citizens after a cellphone video showed one of their officers assaulting a handcuffed man.

“Police brutality captured at its finest,” said Brad Bollinger, the man who filmed this flagrant assault last week.

The man being punched in the face by the officer is 20-year-old Raymond Rober. Police were serving him with an arrest warrant, and he initially ran. However, he eventually stopped and allowed police to arrest him.

He was in handcuffs and cooperating with officers when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

“As he leans his head down, he’s adjusting the handcuffs on the back of him because they’re probably uncomfortable, and the lady officer strikes him in the side of the head,” says Bollinger. “It’s a coward move. It’s a thing of complete power. She knows that she has him, and he has nowhere to go, so she took complete advantage of it. It’s a sucker move.”

“It seems to me, based on the other officer’s conduct, he didn’t do something that justified being hit in any capacity,” Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, toldABC 13 News. “Certainly not while being handcuffed.”

After he had been punched in the face, Rober was then booked into Lucas County Jail on multiple charges, including resisting arrest.

Notice in the video below that not one of the officers around the man attempted to stop the other officer’s assault.

Police have not released the officer’s name and refuse to comment after they watched the video, stating only that the department has launched an investigation.

Suspect was cooperating with cops when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

Toledo, OH — Police in Toledo will have a hard time building the trust of their citizens after a cellphone video showed one of their officers assaulting a handcuffed man.

“Police brutality captured at its finest,” said Brad Bollinger, the man who filmed this flagrant assault last week.

The man being punched in the face by the officer is 20-year-old Raymond Rober. Police were serving him with an arrest warrant, and he initially ran. However, he eventually stopped and allowed police to arrest him.

He was in handcuffs and cooperating with officers when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

“As he leans his head down, he’s adjusting the handcuffs on the back of him because they’re probably uncomfortable, and the lady officer strikes him in the side of the head,” says Bollinger. “It’s a coward move. It’s a thing of complete power. She knows that she has him, and he has nowhere to go, so she took complete advantage of it. It’s a sucker move.”

“It seems to me, based on the other officer’s conduct, he didn’t do something that justified being hit in any capacity,” Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, toldABC 13 News. “Certainly not while being handcuffed.”

After he had been punched in the face, Rober was then booked into Lucas County Jail on multiple charges, including resisting arrest.

Notice in the video below that not one of the officers around the man attempted to stop the other officer’s assault.

Police have not released the officer’s name and refuse to comment after they watched the video, stating only that the department has launched an investigation.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/world/how-gates-foundation-and-western-countries-are-plotting-take-control-africas-agricultureHow Gates the Foundation and Western Countries Are Plotting to Take Control of Africa's Agriculturehttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87965464/0/alternet~How-Gates-the-Foundation-and-Western-Countries-Are-Plotting-to-Take-Control-of-Africas-Agriculture

Small farmers are being marginalized and excluded thanks to corporate-friendly regulations.

A battle is currently being waged over Africa's seed systems. After decades of neglect and weak investment in African agriculture, there is renewed interest in funding African agriculture.

These new investments take the form of philanthropic and international development aid as well as private investment funds. They are based on the potentially huge profitability of African agriculture - and seed systems are a key target.

Right now ministers are co-ordinating their next steps at the 34th COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) Intergovernmental Committee meeting that kicked off yesterday, 22nd March, in preparation for the main Summit that will follow on 30th and 31st March 2015.

COMESA's key aim is to pave the way for a "Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in 2017 under the auspices of the African Union" with uniform regulations, including on agricultural products, seeds and GMOs.

A recent meeting on biotechnology and biosafety was held to establish a "COMESA biotechnology and biosafety policy implementation plan" (COMBIP) to roll out from 2015-2019, "leading to increased biotechnology applications and agricultural commodity trade in the region."

But read between the lines and its real purpose was to facilitate the planting and commercialization of GMO crops in Africa all at one go, instead of country by country. USAID Regional representatives for East Africa, based in Nairobi, were present to monitor the process and ensure the desired outcome.

The regulations, according to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, "will greatly facilitate agricultural transformation in the COMESA member states towards industrialization of farming systems based on the logic of the highly controversial, failed and hopelessly doomed Green Revolution model of agriculture."

They "promote only one type of seed breeding, namely industrial seed breeding involving the use of advanced breeding technologies. The entire orientation of the seed Regulations is towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties in terms of seed quality control and variety registration."

No place for small farmers!

"What is very clear is that small farmers in Africa, seeking to develop or maintain varieties, create local seed enterprises or cultivate locally adapted varieties are excluded from the proposed COMESA Seed Certification System and Variety Release System, because these varieties willnot fulfill the requirements for distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS).

"Landraces or farmers' varieties usually display a high degree of genetic heterogeneity and are adapted to the local environment under which they were developed. In addition, such varieties are not necessarily distinct from each other."

COMESA's key agricultural objectives are to raise production by 6% per year, "integrate farmers into the market economy", make Africa a "strategic player in agricultural science and technology development".

To this end USAID is funding COMESA programmes for 'Coordinated Agricultural Research and Technology Interventions' and 'A Regional Approach Towards Biotechnology' - in other words, to create uniform corporation-friendly regulations for seeds, agro-chemicals and GMOs across the region.

More than 80% of Africa's seed supply currently comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. This seed meets very diverse needs in very diverse conditions.

Farmers know the quality of 'recycled' seed, selected and saved from their own crops. It is cheap and readily available. New varieties can be introduced through informal trade within villages and beyond. This system may not be perfect, but it has been broadly functional for generations.

The so-called 'formal' seed sector is a relatively new addition in Africa and has a narrow focus on commercial crops, especially hybrid maize. This commercial seed may offer yield advantages, but only in the right conditions, e.g. when coupled with continuous use of synthetic fertilizer, irrigation, larger pieces of land and mono-cropping - the Green Revolution package.

Seed production in the formal sector goes through a number of stages, starting with breeders' and pre-basic seed which has high varietal purity; then foundation / basic seed, which is a bulking up of the breeders' seed; then larger quantities of certified seed are produced for retail sale to farmers.

In most countries in Africa, the public sector was responsible for certified seed production and distribution. Lack of resources, especially following structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and IMF in the 1980s and 1990s, reduced the effectiveness of this system.

As a result, availability of certified seed was sometimes limited and farmers often found it difficult to access this seed. Farmers continued relying on the tried and trusted seed saved on their farms and exchanged with one another.

The new commercialisation agenda

The new commercialisation agenda is based on the premise that the public sector is inherently incapable of meeting farmer requirements for quality seed.

This agenda is led by USAID and other G8 countries especially through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, and philanthropic institutions like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) working hand in hand with multinational corporations (MNCs) including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara and others.

The EU also funded a key programme, now concluded, the 'COMESA Regional Agro-Inputs Programme' (COMRAP), to the tune of €20 million, which aims to "reach farmers in each country to improve their sustainable access to agro-inputs and services", "strengthen the capacity for the improvement of seed quality" and "harmonise seed trade regulations throughout the COMESA region".

The first line of attack was to argue for the privatisation of certified seed production and distribution, ostensibly to generate competition. This was identified as a profitable niche in a sector otherwise characterised by low demand, partly because farmers did not have the resources to pay for commercial seed, and partly because their seed needs were already being met through existing systems of production and distribution managed by farmers themselves.

This opened the door to MNC involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable seed enterprise on the continent. The focus remained on hybrid maize and a few other commercial crops with high demand at national level, or niche on demand.

It now appears that phase two of the commercialisation agenda is being launched. This begins the process of privatising the production of early generation seed (EGS), the breeder and foundation seed.

Already plant variety protection laws are being enacted to allow for private ownership of germplasm previously in the public domain. Now Green Revolution pundits are looking for opportunities to remove public control of potentially profitable processes in EGS production.

Gates, USAID and Deloitte study ways to commercialise early generation seed production

To this end, BMGF and USAID commissioned US strategy consulting firm Monitor-Deloitte to identify private business opportunities in EGS production. The study was conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia on maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, common beans, cassava and sweet potato.

BMGF and USAID have handpicked an elite group to meet behind closed doors in London in March 2015 to discuss the consultant's report and to strategise on how to open up another front in the battle to turn African seed into a profit-making venture for MNCs.

What is remarkable about this meeting is that there are very few Africans present. Those who are there mostly represent private sector interests, including seed companies and traders' associations. There are no farmer representatives.

This raises serious concerns about the transparency and accountability of these processes. The image of colonial robber barons meeting in secret to carve up the African continent arises unbidden in the mind.

Private sector cherry picking with public subsidy

The Deloitte report exposes a typical approach of private sector 'cherry picking', where private companies identify profitable activities for their own involvement.

While complaining incessantly about "heavy state involvement" they still insist on selected heavy state involvement to cover unprofitable interventions so that the private sector can take the profitable activities.

These include establishing systems, developing institutions, and even engaging in some productive activities where profits are unlikely but which are needed to allow the profit-making scheme to function.

The report uses cowpea production in Ghana as an example of where the public sector should carry the extremely expensive breeder seed costs to allow the private sector to profit in seed multiplication and distribution.

Breeder seed is prohibitively costly because of low multiplication rates and low demand. But the demand that exists is nonetheless lucrative, so the private sector wants to be involved in those parts of the production process identified as profitable.

Where the whole chain is profitable, Deloitte proposes the public sector be locked out of the production process. Examples are hybrid maize or closed value chains where there is strong but limited demand and early production processes are also potentially profitable, for example hybrid sorghum for brewing.

Deloitte's proposal to "channel government and donor financing into supporting mechanisms for private investment in seed production" is a route to effectively subsidising MNCs at the expense of building farmer capacity and resilience to produce quality seed to meet their own context-specific needs.

Active role for farmers disregarded

A potential role for farmers in production or distribution of seed is not even considered in the study, from conception to results. Indeed farmers are viewed only as passive consumers of seed produced by others for a profit.

While we can acknowledge that farmer-managed systems are not perfect, these systems have survived through extremely adverse conditions. They undoubtedly form a base for seed production and distribution that can be built on. But they require support, especially from public R&D and extension services.

The MNC business model of economies of scale and standardised products cannot respond to the diverse needs of asset-poor but dynamic African farmers.

Rather than engaging in partnerships with MNCs with dubious long-term benefits for farmers, it will be far better for the public sector to orient the capacity and resources at its disposal to work directly with farmers to build on existing seed production and distribution activities.

Small farmers are being marginalized and excluded thanks to corporate-friendly regulations.

A battle is currently being waged over Africa's seed systems. After decades of neglect and weak investment in African agriculture, there is renewed interest in funding African agriculture.

These new investments take the form of philanthropic and international development aid as well as private investment funds. They are based on the potentially huge profitability of African agriculture - and seed systems are a key target.

Right now ministers are co-ordinating their next steps at the 34th COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa) Intergovernmental Committee meeting that kicked off yesterday, 22nd March, in preparation for the main Summit that will follow on 30th and 31st March 2015.

COMESA's key aim is to pave the way for a "Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in 2017 under the auspices of the African Union" with uniform regulations, including on agricultural products, seeds and GMOs.

A recent meeting on biotechnology and biosafety was held to establish a "COMESA biotechnology and biosafety policy implementation plan" (COMBIP) to roll out from 2015-2019, "leading to increased biotechnology applications and agricultural commodity trade in the region."

But read between the lines and its real purpose was to facilitate the planting and commercialization of GMO crops in Africa all at one go, instead of country by country. USAID Regional representatives for East Africa, based in Nairobi, were present to monitor the process and ensure the desired outcome.

The regulations, according to the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, "will greatly facilitate agricultural transformation in the COMESA member states towards industrialization of farming systems based on the logic of the highly controversial, failed and hopelessly doomed Green Revolution model of agriculture."

They "promote only one type of seed breeding, namely industrial seed breeding involving the use of advanced breeding technologies. The entire orientation of the seed Regulations is towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties in terms of seed quality control and variety registration."

No place for small farmers!

"What is very clear is that small farmers in Africa, seeking to develop or maintain varieties, create local seed enterprises or cultivate locally adapted varieties are excluded from the proposed COMESA Seed Certification System and Variety Release System, because these varieties willnot fulfill the requirements for distinctness, uniformity and stability (DUS).

"Landraces or farmers' varieties usually display a high degree of genetic heterogeneity and are adapted to the local environment under which they were developed. In addition, such varieties are not necessarily distinct from each other."

COMESA's key agricultural objectives are to raise production by 6% per year, "integrate farmers into the market economy", make Africa a "strategic player in agricultural science and technology development".

To this end USAID is funding COMESA programmes for 'Coordinated Agricultural Research and Technology Interventions' and 'A Regional Approach Towards Biotechnology' - in other words, to create uniform corporation-friendly regulations for seeds, agro-chemicals and GMOs across the region.

More than 80% of Africa's seed supply currently comes from millions of small-scale farmers recycling and exchanging seed from year to year. This seed meets very diverse needs in very diverse conditions.

Farmers know the quality of 'recycled' seed, selected and saved from their own crops. It is cheap and readily available. New varieties can be introduced through informal trade within villages and beyond. This system may not be perfect, but it has been broadly functional for generations.

The so-called 'formal' seed sector is a relatively new addition in Africa and has a narrow focus on commercial crops, especially hybrid maize. This commercial seed may offer yield advantages, but only in the right conditions, e.g. when coupled with continuous use of synthetic fertilizer, irrigation, larger pieces of land and mono-cropping - the Green Revolution package.

Seed production in the formal sector goes through a number of stages, starting with breeders' and pre-basic seed which has high varietal purity; then foundation / basic seed, which is a bulking up of the breeders' seed; then larger quantities of certified seed are produced for retail sale to farmers.

In most countries in Africa, the public sector was responsible for certified seed production and distribution. Lack of resources, especially following structural adjustment imposed by the World Bank and IMF in the 1980s and 1990s, reduced the effectiveness of this system.

As a result, availability of certified seed was sometimes limited and farmers often found it difficult to access this seed. Farmers continued relying on the tried and trusted seed saved on their farms and exchanged with one another.

The new commercialisation agenda

The new commercialisation agenda is based on the premise that the public sector is inherently incapable of meeting farmer requirements for quality seed.

This agenda is led by USAID and other G8 countries especially through the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, and philanthropic institutions like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) working hand in hand with multinational corporations (MNCs) including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara and others.

The EU also funded a key programme, now concluded, the 'COMESA Regional Agro-Inputs Programme' (COMRAP), to the tune of €20 million, which aims to "reach farmers in each country to improve their sustainable access to agro-inputs and services", "strengthen the capacity for the improvement of seed quality" and "harmonise seed trade regulations throughout the COMESA region".

The first line of attack was to argue for the privatisation of certified seed production and distribution, ostensibly to generate competition. This was identified as a profitable niche in a sector otherwise characterised by low demand, partly because farmers did not have the resources to pay for commercial seed, and partly because their seed needs were already being met through existing systems of production and distribution managed by farmers themselves.

This opened the door to MNC involvement in seed production, including the acquisition of every sizeable seed enterprise on the continent. The focus remained on hybrid maize and a few other commercial crops with high demand at national level, or niche on demand.

It now appears that phase two of the commercialisation agenda is being launched. This begins the process of privatising the production of early generation seed (EGS), the breeder and foundation seed.

Already plant variety protection laws are being enacted to allow for private ownership of germplasm previously in the public domain. Now Green Revolution pundits are looking for opportunities to remove public control of potentially profitable processes in EGS production.

Gates, USAID and Deloitte study ways to commercialise early generation seed production

To this end, BMGF and USAID commissioned US strategy consulting firm Monitor-Deloitte to identify private business opportunities in EGS production. The study was conducted in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zambia on maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, common beans, cassava and sweet potato.

BMGF and USAID have handpicked an elite group to meet behind closed doors in London in March 2015 to discuss the consultant's report and to strategise on how to open up another front in the battle to turn African seed into a profit-making venture for MNCs.

What is remarkable about this meeting is that there are very few Africans present. Those who are there mostly represent private sector interests, including seed companies and traders' associations. There are no farmer representatives.

This raises serious concerns about the transparency and accountability of these processes. The image of colonial robber barons meeting in secret to carve up the African continent arises unbidden in the mind.

Private sector cherry picking with public subsidy

The Deloitte report exposes a typical approach of private sector 'cherry picking', where private companies identify profitable activities for their own involvement.

While complaining incessantly about "heavy state involvement" they still insist on selected heavy state involvement to cover unprofitable interventions so that the private sector can take the profitable activities.

These include establishing systems, developing institutions, and even engaging in some productive activities where profits are unlikely but which are needed to allow the profit-making scheme to function.

The report uses cowpea production in Ghana as an example of where the public sector should carry the extremely expensive breeder seed costs to allow the private sector to profit in seed multiplication and distribution.

Breeder seed is prohibitively costly because of low multiplication rates and low demand. But the demand that exists is nonetheless lucrative, so the private sector wants to be involved in those parts of the production process identified as profitable.

Where the whole chain is profitable, Deloitte proposes the public sector be locked out of the production process. Examples are hybrid maize or closed value chains where there is strong but limited demand and early production processes are also potentially profitable, for example hybrid sorghum for brewing.

Deloitte's proposal to "channel government and donor financing into supporting mechanisms for private investment in seed production" is a route to effectively subsidising MNCs at the expense of building farmer capacity and resilience to produce quality seed to meet their own context-specific needs.

Active role for farmers disregarded

A potential role for farmers in production or distribution of seed is not even considered in the study, from conception to results. Indeed farmers are viewed only as passive consumers of seed produced by others for a profit.

While we can acknowledge that farmer-managed systems are not perfect, these systems have survived through extremely adverse conditions. They undoubtedly form a base for seed production and distribution that can be built on. But they require support, especially from public R&D and extension services.

The MNC business model of economies of scale and standardised products cannot respond to the diverse needs of asset-poor but dynamic African farmers.

Rather than engaging in partnerships with MNCs with dubious long-term benefits for farmers, it will be far better for the public sector to orient the capacity and resources at its disposal to work directly with farmers to build on existing seed production and distribution activities.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/world/saudi-airstrikes-yemen-fuel-fire-gulfSaudi Airstrikes in Yemen Fuel the Fire in the Gulfhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87982346/0/alternet~Saudi-Airstrikes-in-Yemen-Fuel-the-Fire-in-the-Gulf

Whatever happens in Iraq and Yemen, the political temperature of the region is getting hotter by the day.

Foreign states that go to war in Yemen usually come to regret it. The Saudi-led military intervention so far involves only air strikes, but a ground assault may follow. The code name for the action is Operation Decisive Storm, which is probably an indication of what Saudi Arabia and its allies would like to happen in Yemen, rather than what will actually occur.

In practice, a decisive outcome is the least likely prospect for Yemen, just as it has long been in Iraq and Afghanistan. A political feature common to all three countries is that power is divided between so many players it is impossible to defeat or placate them all for very long. Saudi Arabia is backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi but the humiliating speed of his defeat shows his lack of organised support.

The threat of further intervention by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council may be intended to redress the balance of power in Yemen and prevent the Houthis winning a total victory. But Saudi actions and those of the Sunni coalition will be self-fulfilling if the Houthis – never previously full proxies of Iran – find themselves fighting a war in which they are dependent on Iranian financial, political and military backing.

Likewise, the Houthis, as members of the Zaidi sect, were not always seen by Shia in other countries as part of their religious community. But by leading a Sunni coalition Saudi Arabia will internationalise the Yemen conflict and emphasise its sectarian Sunni-Shia dimension.

The US position becomes even more convoluted. Washington had sought to portray its campaign in Yemen against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a success. Drone attacks were supposedly wiping out important AQAP operatives, but the humiliating end result of America’s covert war in Yemen came last week when US Special Operations personnel blew up their heavy equipment and fled the country for the US base at Djibouti. AQAP is becoming a stronger force as the shock troops of the Sunni.

US policy across the Middle East looks contradictory. It is supporting Sunni powers and opposing Iranian allies in Yemen but doing the reverse in Iraq. On Thursday US aircraft for the first time started pounding Islamic State (Isis) positions in Tikrit, 87 miles north of Baghdad. The city has been under assault for four weeks, with 20,000 Shia militia and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers pitted against a few hundred Isis fighters. The Shia militiamen are now reported to have withdrawn but they do not appear to have gone far. Effectively, the battle for Tikrit is being waged by Iranian-directed Shia militia backed by US air power, even if the two sides are rivals as well as allies.

Ultimately, the US may not have much choice. If it refuses to back anti-Islamic State combatants for whatever reason it will be to the benefit of Isis. The numbers tell the story: there are between 100,000 and 120,000 Shia militiamen in Iraq compared with only 12 brigades in the Iraqi army capable of fighting, about 48,000 soldiers, although this total may be inflated. Isis has been conscripting young men across its self-declared caliphate since last October and may have over 100,000 fighters. If the US relies on Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga ground forces alone to put Isis out of business, it will be difficult.

Why did the US finally use its air power at Tikrit, formerly a city of 200,000? First, it was the only help the Baghdad government formally asked for this week. The US may have concluded, as it did with the 134-day siege of the town of Kobani last year, that it could not allow Isis to succeed in Tikrit. Second, if the city did fall, Washington did not want Iran and the Shia militia to get all the credit.

A further motive is that both the US and Iran want to restore some credibility to the Iraqi government and army after their crushing defeats by Isis forces last year. So far the Iraqi army has not recaptured a single city or substantial town from Isis since the fall of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad in January 2014. Such limited military successes as there have been were won by the militias in the provinces neighbouring Baghdad.

The US-led international coalition opposing Isis also needs to do something to bolster its own credibility. Despite some 2,500 coalition air strike launched against it since last August, the Islamic State has lost little territory. Isis may be battered but it shows no signs of being anywhere near to defeat.

The Independent conducted a series of interviews in February and March with people who had recently left Isis and, while none were sympathetic to it, there was nobody who believed it was going to be destroyed by mounting internal discontent or external military pressure. A prime reason for this is that the Sunni Arab communities in Iraq and Syria are not being offered an acceptable alternative to Isis rule. They are all terrified of becoming the victims of a pogrom that does not distinguish between Isis supporters and ordinary Sunni.

A further feature of life in the Isis caliphate that emerged from these interviews is that it is well organised: it taxes salaries and sales, it conscripts young men of military age, controls education and mercilessly strikes down any opponents. Its stability might be shaken if it suffered a string of military defeats but so far this has not happened.

Air strikes have made it revert to semi-guerrilla tactics, not holding ground against superior forces backed by airpower but counter-attacking briskly when they have moved on or their lines of communication have become longer and more vulnerable. Given the difficulty in capturing Tikrit, it does not look as if an assault on Mosul will be possible for a long time. There seems to be no enthusiasm on the government side retake Fallujah, although it is so much closer to the capital.

Whatever happens in Iraq and Yemen, the political temperature of the region is getting hotter by the day. Looked at from a Saudi and Gulf monarchy point of view, Iran and the Shia are on the advance, becoming either the dominant or the most powerful influence in four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria have linked their futures inextricably and fatally to Isis and other al-Qaeda type organisations. These have military strength, but they make many powerful enemies.

The confrontations between Sunni and Shia, and between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Iran and its allies, is becoming deeper and more militarised. Conflicts cross-infect and exacerbate each other, preventing solutions to individual issues. Thus Saudi intervention in Yemen reduces the chance of a US-Iranian agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme and sanctions. As these conflicts and divisions spread, the chances of creating a common front that is capable of destroying the Islamic State are getting fewer by the day.

Whatever happens in Iraq and Yemen, the political temperature of the region is getting hotter by the day.

Foreign states that go to war in Yemen usually come to regret it. The Saudi-led military intervention so far involves only air strikes, but a ground assault may follow. The code name for the action is Operation Decisive Storm, which is probably an indication of what Saudi Arabia and its allies would like to happen in Yemen, rather than what will actually occur.

In practice, a decisive outcome is the least likely prospect for Yemen, just as it has long been in Iraq and Afghanistan. A political feature common to all three countries is that power is divided between so many players it is impossible to defeat or placate them all for very long. Saudi Arabia is backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi but the humiliating speed of his defeat shows his lack of organised support.

The threat of further intervention by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council may be intended to redress the balance of power in Yemen and prevent the Houthis winning a total victory. But Saudi actions and those of the Sunni coalition will be self-fulfilling if the Houthis – never previously full proxies of Iran – find themselves fighting a war in which they are dependent on Iranian financial, political and military backing.

Likewise, the Houthis, as members of the Zaidi sect, were not always seen by Shia in other countries as part of their religious community. But by leading a Sunni coalition Saudi Arabia will internationalise the Yemen conflict and emphasise its sectarian Sunni-Shia dimension.

The US position becomes even more convoluted. Washington had sought to portray its campaign in Yemen against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as a success. Drone attacks were supposedly wiping out important AQAP operatives, but the humiliating end result of America’s covert war in Yemen came last week when US Special Operations personnel blew up their heavy equipment and fled the country for the US base at Djibouti. AQAP is becoming a stronger force as the shock troops of the Sunni.

US policy across the Middle East looks contradictory. It is supporting Sunni powers and opposing Iranian allies in Yemen but doing the reverse in Iraq. On Thursday US aircraft for the first time started pounding Islamic State (Isis) positions in Tikrit, 87 miles north of Baghdad. The city has been under assault for four weeks, with 20,000 Shia militia and 3,000 Iraqi soldiers pitted against a few hundred Isis fighters. The Shia militiamen are now reported to have withdrawn but they do not appear to have gone far. Effectively, the battle for Tikrit is being waged by Iranian-directed Shia militia backed by US air power, even if the two sides are rivals as well as allies.

Ultimately, the US may not have much choice. If it refuses to back anti-Islamic State combatants for whatever reason it will be to the benefit of Isis. The numbers tell the story: there are between 100,000 and 120,000 Shia militiamen in Iraq compared with only 12 brigades in the Iraqi army capable of fighting, about 48,000 soldiers, although this total may be inflated. Isis has been conscripting young men across its self-declared caliphate since last October and may have over 100,000 fighters. If the US relies on Iraqi government and Kurdish Peshmerga ground forces alone to put Isis out of business, it will be difficult.

Why did the US finally use its air power at Tikrit, formerly a city of 200,000? First, it was the only help the Baghdad government formally asked for this week. The US may have concluded, as it did with the 134-day siege of the town of Kobani last year, that it could not allow Isis to succeed in Tikrit. Second, if the city did fall, Washington did not want Iran and the Shia militia to get all the credit.

A further motive is that both the US and Iran want to restore some credibility to the Iraqi government and army after their crushing defeats by Isis forces last year. So far the Iraqi army has not recaptured a single city or substantial town from Isis since the fall of Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad in January 2014. Such limited military successes as there have been were won by the militias in the provinces neighbouring Baghdad.

The US-led international coalition opposing Isis also needs to do something to bolster its own credibility. Despite some 2,500 coalition air strike launched against it since last August, the Islamic State has lost little territory. Isis may be battered but it shows no signs of being anywhere near to defeat.

The Independent conducted a series of interviews in February and March with people who had recently left Isis and, while none were sympathetic to it, there was nobody who believed it was going to be destroyed by mounting internal discontent or external military pressure. A prime reason for this is that the Sunni Arab communities in Iraq and Syria are not being offered an acceptable alternative to Isis rule. They are all terrified of becoming the victims of a pogrom that does not distinguish between Isis supporters and ordinary Sunni.

A further feature of life in the Isis caliphate that emerged from these interviews is that it is well organised: it taxes salaries and sales, it conscripts young men of military age, controls education and mercilessly strikes down any opponents. Its stability might be shaken if it suffered a string of military defeats but so far this has not happened.

Air strikes have made it revert to semi-guerrilla tactics, not holding ground against superior forces backed by airpower but counter-attacking briskly when they have moved on or their lines of communication have become longer and more vulnerable. Given the difficulty in capturing Tikrit, it does not look as if an assault on Mosul will be possible for a long time. There seems to be no enthusiasm on the government side retake Fallujah, although it is so much closer to the capital.

Whatever happens in Iraq and Yemen, the political temperature of the region is getting hotter by the day. Looked at from a Saudi and Gulf monarchy point of view, Iran and the Shia are on the advance, becoming either the dominant or the most powerful influence in four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. The Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria have linked their futures inextricably and fatally to Isis and other al-Qaeda type organisations. These have military strength, but they make many powerful enemies.

The confrontations between Sunni and Shia, and between Saudi Arabia and its allies and Iran and its allies, is becoming deeper and more militarised. Conflicts cross-infect and exacerbate each other, preventing solutions to individual issues. Thus Saudi intervention in Yemen reduces the chance of a US-Iranian agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme and sanctions. As these conflicts and divisions spread, the chances of creating a common front that is capable of destroying the Islamic State are getting fewer by the day.

Corporate greed has reached its limit. It does not have to be this way.

The distorted belief that wealthy individuals and corporations are job creators has led to sizeable business subsidies and tax breaks. The biggest giveaway is often overlooked: corporations use our nation's plentiful resources, largely at no cost, to build their profits.

There are several factual and well-established reasons why corporations owe a great debt to the nation that has made them rich.

Our Tax Money Pays for Much of the Research

The majority (57 percent) of basic research, the essential startup work for products that don't yet yield profits, is paid for by our tax dollars. When ALL forms of research are included -- basic, applied, and developmental -- approximately 30 percentcomes from public money. In 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

All of our technology, securities trading, medicine, infrastructure, and national security have their roots in public research and development. For a pageful of details look here.

Even the business-minded The Economist, with reference to Mariana Mazzucato's book The Entrepreneurial State, admits that "Ms Mazzucato is right to argue that the state has played a central role in producing game-changing breakthroughs, and that its contribution to the success of technology-based businesses should not be underestimated."

Fewer and Fewer People are Reaping the Benefits of Our National Productivity

Despite a continuing growth in productivity in the last 35 years, wages have fallen dramatically, and technology has begun to diminish the need for warehouse workers, bank tellers, cashiers, travel agents, and a host of other middle-income positions. The driverless car and robot delivery devices are on the horizon. The Economist opines again, this time in worker-unfriendly terms: "Robots don’t complain, or demand higher wages, or kill themselves."

Robert Reich notes that much of the photo processing once done by Kodak with 145,000 employees is now done by Instagram with 13 employees. The messaging application WhatsApp, recently purchased by Facebook, has 55 employees serving 450 million customers.

Profit-taking has another insidious and predatory side to it. Big firms use intellectual property law (another gift from the taxpayers) to snatch up patents on any new money-making products, no matter how much government- and university-funded research went into it. An example is genetically engineered insulin, which due to patent protection cannot be made generically, and as a result can cost a patient up to $5,000 a year, about ten times more than a patent-expired version. Another example, as detailed by Sam Pizzigati, is the cost of new cancer drugs, which can reach $120,000 per year for many patients.

Following the lead of the pharmaceutical industry, Big Tech is now getting into the act. By 2011 Apple and Google were spending more on patent purchases and patent lawsuits than on research and development.

Corporations Use Our Resources but Avoid Their Taxes

Stunningly, over half of U.S. corporate foreign profits are now being held in tax havens, double the share of just twenty years ago. Yet for some of our largest corporations, according to the Wall Street Journal, over 75 percent of the cash owned by their foreign subsidiaries remains in U.S. banks, "held in U.S. dollars or parked in U.S. government and corporate securities."

The nature and degree of tax avoidance by some of our most resource-demanding companies is nearly beyond belief. Apple, which still does most of its product and research development in the United States, moved $30 billion in profits to an Irish subsidiary with no employees. Google, whose business is based on the Internet, the Digital Library Initiative, and the geographical database of the U.S. Census Bureau, has gained recognition as one of the world's biggest tax avoiders. Walgreens (which later backed down), Burger King, and Medtronic are the biggest names in the so-called inversions that allow companies to desert the country that made them successful. Microsoft and Pfizer owe a combined $50 billion in taxes on profits being held overseas. Much-admired Warren Buffett heads a company (Berkshire Hathaway) that made a $28 billion profit last year, yet claimed a $395 million tax refund.

Corporations Have Stopped Investing in America

An Apple executive recently said, "The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need."

But corporations are spending most of their profits on themselves, rather than on job-creating research and innovation. An incredible 95 percent of S&P 500 profits were spent on investor-enriching stock buybacks and dividend payouts last year. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks. According to one estimate, public U.S. corporations have spent $6.9 trillion on stock buybacks in the past ten years, about six times more than the total student loan debt of $1.16 trillion.

Buybacks are not only a reflection of corporate greed, but possibly also of criminal behavior. Buying back stock was considered a form of illegal stock manipulation until the Wall-Street-connected chairman of the SEC made it 'legal' during the Reagan administration.

A Progressive Solution: Dividends for All

In his book, With Liberty and Dividends For All, Peter Barnes argues for a system of dividends to all Americans for our co-owned national wealth. Because corporations have used our resources -- research, infrastructure, environment, educational and legal systems -- to develop technologies that are gradually reducing the need for human involvement, and because all of us have contributed to our national productivity, either directly or through our parents and grandparents, we all deserve to benefit.

As Barnes states, "The sum of wealth created by nature, our ancestors, and our economy as a whole is what I here call co-owned wealth. Some, including myself, have called it shared wealth, the commons, or common wealth. Whatever we call it, it's the goose that lays almost all the eggs of private wealth."

Precedent exists in the successful and widely popular Alaska Permanent Fund. With a nationwide version of this Fund, all of us -- rich and poor alike -- would receive a share of our co-owned wealth, perhaps up to $5,000 per year, according to Barnes. The revenue would come from a carbon tax and/or a financial speculation tax and/or a redirection of corporate profits away from executive-enriching stock buybacks.

The dividend concept is fair, manageable, and based on precedent. It's also good business. The shrinking middle class will have money to spend, and the money they spend will end up as a new source of income for the profit-hungry corporate world.

Corporate greed has reached its limit. It does not have to be this way.

The distorted belief that wealthy individuals and corporations are job creators has led to sizeable business subsidies and tax breaks. The biggest giveaway is often overlooked: corporations use our nation's plentiful resources, largely at no cost, to build their profits.

There are several factual and well-established reasons why corporations owe a great debt to the nation that has made them rich.

Our Tax Money Pays for Much of the Research

The majority (57 percent) of basic research, the essential startup work for products that don't yet yield profits, is paid for by our tax dollars. When ALL forms of research are included -- basic, applied, and developmental -- approximately 30 percentcomes from public money. In 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

All of our technology, securities trading, medicine, infrastructure, and national security have their roots in public research and development. For a pageful of details look here.

Even the business-minded The Economist, with reference to Mariana Mazzucato's book The Entrepreneurial State, admits that "Ms Mazzucato is right to argue that the state has played a central role in producing game-changing breakthroughs, and that its contribution to the success of technology-based businesses should not be underestimated."

Fewer and Fewer People are Reaping the Benefits of Our National Productivity

Despite a continuing growth in productivity in the last 35 years, wages have fallen dramatically, and technology has begun to diminish the need for warehouse workers, bank tellers, cashiers, travel agents, and a host of other middle-income positions. The driverless car and robot delivery devices are on the horizon. The Economist opines again, this time in worker-unfriendly terms: "Robots don’t complain, or demand higher wages, or kill themselves."

Robert Reich notes that much of the photo processing once done by Kodak with 145,000 employees is now done by Instagram with 13 employees. The messaging application WhatsApp, recently purchased by Facebook, has 55 employees serving 450 million customers.

Profit-taking has another insidious and predatory side to it. Big firms use intellectual property law (another gift from the taxpayers) to snatch up patents on any new money-making products, no matter how much government- and university-funded research went into it. An example is genetically engineered insulin, which due to patent protection cannot be made generically, and as a result can cost a patient up to $5,000 a year, about ten times more than a patent-expired version. Another example, as detailed by Sam Pizzigati, is the cost of new cancer drugs, which can reach $120,000 per year for many patients.

Following the lead of the pharmaceutical industry, Big Tech is now getting into the act. By 2011 Apple and Google were spending more on patent purchases and patent lawsuits than on research and development.

Corporations Use Our Resources but Avoid Their Taxes

Stunningly, over half of U.S. corporate foreign profits are now being held in tax havens, double the share of just twenty years ago. Yet for some of our largest corporations, according to the Wall Street Journal, over 75 percent of the cash owned by their foreign subsidiaries remains in U.S. banks, "held in U.S. dollars or parked in U.S. government and corporate securities."

The nature and degree of tax avoidance by some of our most resource-demanding companies is nearly beyond belief. Apple, which still does most of its product and research development in the United States, moved $30 billion in profits to an Irish subsidiary with no employees. Google, whose business is based on the Internet, the Digital Library Initiative, and the geographical database of the U.S. Census Bureau, has gained recognition as one of the world's biggest tax avoiders. Walgreens (which later backed down), Burger King, and Medtronic are the biggest names in the so-called inversions that allow companies to desert the country that made them successful. Microsoft and Pfizer owe a combined $50 billion in taxes on profits being held overseas. Much-admired Warren Buffett heads a company (Berkshire Hathaway) that made a $28 billion profit last year, yet claimed a $395 million tax refund.

Corporations Have Stopped Investing in America

An Apple executive recently said, "The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need."

But corporations are spending most of their profits on themselves, rather than on job-creating research and innovation. An incredible 95 percent of S&P 500 profits were spent on investor-enriching stock buybacks and dividend payouts last year. In 1981, major corporations were spending less than 3 percent of their combined net income on buybacks. According to one estimate, public U.S. corporations have spent $6.9 trillion on stock buybacks in the past ten years, about six times more than the total student loan debt of $1.16 trillion.

Buybacks are not only a reflection of corporate greed, but possibly also of criminal behavior. Buying back stock was considered a form of illegal stock manipulation until the Wall-Street-connected chairman of the SEC made it 'legal' during the Reagan administration.

A Progressive Solution: Dividends for All

In his book, With Liberty and Dividends For All, Peter Barnes argues for a system of dividends to all Americans for our co-owned national wealth. Because corporations have used our resources -- research, infrastructure, environment, educational and legal systems -- to develop technologies that are gradually reducing the need for human involvement, and because all of us have contributed to our national productivity, either directly or through our parents and grandparents, we all deserve to benefit.

As Barnes states, "The sum of wealth created by nature, our ancestors, and our economy as a whole is what I here call co-owned wealth. Some, including myself, have called it shared wealth, the commons, or common wealth. Whatever we call it, it's the goose that lays almost all the eggs of private wealth."

Precedent exists in the successful and widely popular Alaska Permanent Fund. With a nationwide version of this Fund, all of us -- rich and poor alike -- would receive a share of our co-owned wealth, perhaps up to $5,000 per year, according to Barnes. The revenue would come from a carbon tax and/or a financial speculation tax and/or a redirection of corporate profits away from executive-enriching stock buybacks.

The dividend concept is fair, manageable, and based on precedent. It's also good business. The shrinking middle class will have money to spend, and the money they spend will end up as a new source of income for the profit-hungry corporate world.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/alternet-comics-introducing-submerged-state-south-floridaAlterNet Comics: Introducing the Submerged State of South Floridahttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87945737/0/alternet~AlterNet-Comics-Introducing-the-Submerged-State-of-South-Florida

In response to a ban on state employees using the term "climate change," south Floridians are pushing for secession.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/my-personal-libertarian-hell-how-i-enraged-movement-and-paid-priceMy Personal Libertarian Hell: How I Enraged the Movement and Paid the Pricehttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87946879/0/alternet~My-Personal-Libertarian-Hell-How-I-Enraged-the-Movement-and-Paid-the-Price

I used to be a Libertarian. Then I had the gall to criticize them in an article.

The most dangerous thing you can do on the Internet is to send your banking information to a mysterious Nigerian prince. The second most dangerous thing you can do is to write even the most tepid criticism of libertarians. I recently wrote piece about my trip to Honduras and how conditions in that country reminded me of a “Libertarian Utopia.” I was inspired not only by the trip but also from reading many articles that have outlined a failing libertarian experiment in that country (here and here, for instance). I focused on just this one small factor when, of course, I also realize that the problems of Central America are historical, entrenched, and above all, complicated. From the reaction online you would have thought I personally kicked Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek square in his wrinkled, decomposed sack.

Reaction was swift and personal, including widely circulated factoids that I’m both fat and bald (guilty on both counts). Some called for my utter, personal ruin. Fair enough. But there were comments that went too far, such as those that addressed my parenting skills or that examined my decade-old divorce. I was unprepared for the fire hose of rage and invective. In fact, it’s hard to overstate just how furious—and proud of it—this segment of America seems. I could provide links, but I’d rather not send them traffic. If you are compelled to see for yourself, feel free to take a refreshing dip into the libertarian cesspool, but try not to get any in your mouth.

I’m tempted to avoid this group altogether, but I think it would be chicken shit of me to back away because of some name-calling and an epic temper tantrum. Every badly written blog and hysterical, spittle-flecked Internet video only further proves the point that these people have serious problems.

I often write about libertarianism from my own personal journey through it. The biggest criticism I’ve heard while writing various pieces is that I was “never really a libertarian.” I was a Ron Paul delegate in Nevada and wrote about it for the Reno Gazette Journal (see above), and I supported other libertarian candidates and policies for years. The overuse of the “no true Scotsman fallacy” raises the question of what level of commitment is required to be considered a libertarian. Must I be branded or tattooed? Does it require ritualistic testicular shaving (nod to Dr. Evil)? Libertarians demand a level of unexamined commitment unmatched by any institution except perhaps church, which makes sense because the movement is less about what is good for society and is more a series of articles in an indefensible faith.

Although not all libertarians hate, a sizable number make the movement look both angry and unstable. They rage against the smallest loss of unearned privilege in society, while screaming about a “meritocracy.” Those who get ahead in our country do so more often from connections, family money and privilege than from any innate goodness or intelligence, and libertarians gloss over all questions of class, race and privilege in the hope of a return to a pure market ideal that has never existed. The history of America is an unending fight between untamed market forces and human beings, and when the free market gets out of hand, real people suffer, as so many did in the Great Recession of 2008.

I know that I do things that piss off libertarians, because I would have been infuriated by my own observations just a few short years ago. Most of all, I employ the shorthand of using “conservative,” “libertarian” and “Tea Party” interchangeably. Some libertarians think this is unfair to “pure” libertarians, but in reality the lines between these groups have grown fuzzy to nonexistent. They battle for the same insane voting bloc and bad ideas. Despite the constant demand for purity, individual libertarians hold divergent and even contradictory opinions in every imaginable topic. This leads to the troubling trend of otherwise decent libertarians giving intellectual cover for some of the most awful, mean-spirited ideas on the right.

Libertarians argue for eliminating Social Security right in the party platform, for instance, and this idea has been hijacked by far more aggrieved and intellect-free groups like the Tea Party. The only benefit I see to this unholy alliance is that there might be entertainment value in the war between social conservatives and libertarians over control of the Republican Party. The debate itself squeezes libertarians into an ever-shrinking, rage-filled, political ghetto.

I have often remarked that libertarians get a few things right, such as social issues. Yet this cross-pollination with other parts of the right has hurt their credibility, forcing them into cowardice or capitulation on some issues. My favorite example is gay marriage. Instead of supporting “freedom to marry” many offer this gem: “the government should not be in the marriage business at all!” This is not the party line for some libertarians, but I’ve heard it firsthand from too many. Aside from showing deep cowardice, it lets conservative-minded libertarians have their cake and eat it too.

I used to enjoy libertarian books and lively discussions. As time passed, I noticed the philosophy and resulting policy suggestions were miles away from the reality that I lived every day. Along with conspiracy theories and an increasing disconnect with reality, I saw growth of unreasonable rage. Purity is bad enough, but when you add levels of impotent, unquenchable rage, you create toxicity that has become the libertarian brand.

It was inevitable. Rage defines all right-leaning movements in the Obama era. The existence of this hate, vitriol and disgust is beyond dispute. You see it on Fox News, in talk radio and permeating the internet. When they lose, they’re angry and even when they win they’re still pretty pissed off. Some random liberal writes a little article for Salon and libertarians release a torrent of hate articles, personal attacks, and rage filled podcasts. What a burden it must be to walk around so furious all the time. It’s almost a shame, because diversity of ideas in a democracy is a good thing, but when they are poisoned with hate, they can’t be taken seriously.

As I said at the outset, the easy move is to ignore libertarians, because they have no hope of winning serious office. Even the strategy of reshaping the GOP has limits. Rand Paul has to pretend he doesn’t want to reverse five decades of civil rights law just to be considered a “serious politician.” In fact there is also an undercurrent of racial animus that infects many libertarians. From Ron Paul’s lost racist news letters to the most current movement leaders, they just can’t seem to help themselves.

After my Honduras article, Tom Woods, noted libertarian “thinker,” called me out on Twitter. I called him a “hate-monger” and blocked him. I regretted it immediately. I didn’t know him well enough to sling that insult, so I apologized. A few days later, I read up on his work, and found out that my apology was the real mistake. Woods seems to hold a buffet of outlandish opinions. He is a neo-Confederate and founding member of the League of the South. In 2005, Reason, the flagship libertarian magazine and one I still enjoy on occasion, called him out for one of his books which seemed to express sympathy for the slave-owning, antebellum south. The libertarian undercurrent of sympathy for slaveholders makes it hard to swallow all that cheap talk about “liberty.”

Although I did not always feel this way, I’m opposed to letting corporate rights trump every other part of humanity, be it labor, government or poor people. At the same time, engaging libertarians gives no return on investment. As a political ideology, it’s bankrupt. There are also far more odious statements coming from the religious right every day, and they have an actual, terrifying shot at power. Meanwhile, milquetoast Democrats have failed to stem corporate money in elections and haven’t managed to slow the great hollowing out of the middle class. Dealing with real problems of real people is way more interesting and important to me than the libertarian obsession of hoarding gold and assault rifles.

Movements, like religions, must face competing ideologies, actual facts and “turncoats” like me. Politics isn’t a religious cult where the penalty for leaving is death, or at least it shouldn’t be. I still believe in liberty, personal responsibility and, most of all, freedom. Libertarians don’t own these words, and they aren’t even that good at defending the values behind them. I don’t want to be “told what to do” any more now than I ever did, but I also recognize that we cannot live in a society of individuals without regard for anyone else.

I used to be a Libertarian. Then I had the gall to criticize them in an article.

The most dangerous thing you can do on the Internet is to send your banking information to a mysterious Nigerian prince. The second most dangerous thing you can do is to write even the most tepid criticism of libertarians. I recently wrote piece about my trip to Honduras and how conditions in that country reminded me of a “Libertarian Utopia.” I was inspired not only by the trip but also from reading many articles that have outlined a failing libertarian experiment in that country (here and here, for instance). I focused on just this one small factor when, of course, I also realize that the problems of Central America are historical, entrenched, and above all, complicated. From the reaction online you would have thought I personally kicked Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek square in his wrinkled, decomposed sack.

Reaction was swift and personal, including widely circulated factoids that I’m both fat and bald (guilty on both counts). Some called for my utter, personal ruin. Fair enough. But there were comments that went too far, such as those that addressed my parenting skills or that examined my decade-old divorce. I was unprepared for the fire hose of rage and invective. In fact, it’s hard to overstate just how furious—and proud of it—this segment of America seems. I could provide links, but I’d rather not send them traffic. If you are compelled to see for yourself, feel free to take a refreshing dip into the libertarian cesspool, but try not to get any in your mouth.

I’m tempted to avoid this group altogether, but I think it would be chicken shit of me to back away because of some name-calling and an epic temper tantrum. Every badly written blog and hysterical, spittle-flecked Internet video only further proves the point that these people have serious problems.

I often write about libertarianism from my own personal journey through it. The biggest criticism I’ve heard while writing various pieces is that I was “never really a libertarian.” I was a Ron Paul delegate in Nevada and wrote about it for the Reno Gazette Journal (see above), and I supported other libertarian candidates and policies for years. The overuse of the “no true Scotsman fallacy” raises the question of what level of commitment is required to be considered a libertarian. Must I be branded or tattooed? Does it require ritualistic testicular shaving (nod to Dr. Evil)? Libertarians demand a level of unexamined commitment unmatched by any institution except perhaps church, which makes sense because the movement is less about what is good for society and is more a series of articles in an indefensible faith.

Although not all libertarians hate, a sizable number make the movement look both angry and unstable. They rage against the smallest loss of unearned privilege in society, while screaming about a “meritocracy.” Those who get ahead in our country do so more often from connections, family money and privilege than from any innate goodness or intelligence, and libertarians gloss over all questions of class, race and privilege in the hope of a return to a pure market ideal that has never existed. The history of America is an unending fight between untamed market forces and human beings, and when the free market gets out of hand, real people suffer, as so many did in the Great Recession of 2008.

I know that I do things that piss off libertarians, because I would have been infuriated by my own observations just a few short years ago. Most of all, I employ the shorthand of using “conservative,” “libertarian” and “Tea Party” interchangeably. Some libertarians think this is unfair to “pure” libertarians, but in reality the lines between these groups have grown fuzzy to nonexistent. They battle for the same insane voting bloc and bad ideas. Despite the constant demand for purity, individual libertarians hold divergent and even contradictory opinions in every imaginable topic. This leads to the troubling trend of otherwise decent libertarians giving intellectual cover for some of the most awful, mean-spirited ideas on the right.

Libertarians argue for eliminating Social Security right in the party platform, for instance, and this idea has been hijacked by far more aggrieved and intellect-free groups like the Tea Party. The only benefit I see to this unholy alliance is that there might be entertainment value in the war between social conservatives and libertarians over control of the Republican Party. The debate itself squeezes libertarians into an ever-shrinking, rage-filled, political ghetto.

I have often remarked that libertarians get a few things right, such as social issues. Yet this cross-pollination with other parts of the right has hurt their credibility, forcing them into cowardice or capitulation on some issues. My favorite example is gay marriage. Instead of supporting “freedom to marry” many offer this gem: “the government should not be in the marriage business at all!” This is not the party line for some libertarians, but I’ve heard it firsthand from too many. Aside from showing deep cowardice, it lets conservative-minded libertarians have their cake and eat it too.

I used to enjoy libertarian books and lively discussions. As time passed, I noticed the philosophy and resulting policy suggestions were miles away from the reality that I lived every day. Along with conspiracy theories and an increasing disconnect with reality, I saw growth of unreasonable rage. Purity is bad enough, but when you add levels of impotent, unquenchable rage, you create toxicity that has become the libertarian brand.

It was inevitable. Rage defines all right-leaning movements in the Obama era. The existence of this hate, vitriol and disgust is beyond dispute. You see it on Fox News, in talk radio and permeating the internet. When they lose, they’re angry and even when they win they’re still pretty pissed off. Some random liberal writes a little article for Salon and libertarians release a torrent of hate articles, personal attacks, and rage filled podcasts. What a burden it must be to walk around so furious all the time. It’s almost a shame, because diversity of ideas in a democracy is a good thing, but when they are poisoned with hate, they can’t be taken seriously.

As I said at the outset, the easy move is to ignore libertarians, because they have no hope of winning serious office. Even the strategy of reshaping the GOP has limits. Rand Paul has to pretend he doesn’t want to reverse five decades of civil rights law just to be considered a “serious politician.” In fact there is also an undercurrent of racial animus that infects many libertarians. From Ron Paul’s lost racist news letters to the most current movement leaders, they just can’t seem to help themselves.

After my Honduras article, Tom Woods, noted libertarian “thinker,” called me out on Twitter. I called him a “hate-monger” and blocked him. I regretted it immediately. I didn’t know him well enough to sling that insult, so I apologized. A few days later, I read up on his work, and found out that my apology was the real mistake. Woods seems to hold a buffet of outlandish opinions. He is a neo-Confederate and founding member of the League of the South. In 2005, Reason, the flagship libertarian magazine and one I still enjoy on occasion, called him out for one of his books which seemed to express sympathy for the slave-owning, antebellum south. The libertarian undercurrent of sympathy for slaveholders makes it hard to swallow all that cheap talk about “liberty.”

Although I did not always feel this way, I’m opposed to letting corporate rights trump every other part of humanity, be it labor, government or poor people. At the same time, engaging libertarians gives no return on investment. As a political ideology, it’s bankrupt. There are also far more odious statements coming from the religious right every day, and they have an actual, terrifying shot at power. Meanwhile, milquetoast Democrats have failed to stem corporate money in elections and haven’t managed to slow the great hollowing out of the middle class. Dealing with real problems of real people is way more interesting and important to me than the libertarian obsession of hoarding gold and assault rifles.

Movements, like religions, must face competing ideologies, actual facts and “turncoats” like me. Politics isn’t a religious cult where the penalty for leaving is death, or at least it shouldn’t be. I still believe in liberty, personal responsibility and, most of all, freedom. Libertarians don’t own these words, and they aren’t even that good at defending the values behind them. I don’t want to be “told what to do” any more now than I ever did, but I also recognize that we cannot live in a society of individuals without regard for anyone else.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/feeling-intense-emotions-doesnt-make-you-crazy-thats-not-what-big-pharma-wants-you-thinkFeeling Intense Emotions Doesn't Make You Crazy—But That's Not What Big Pharma Wants You to Thinkhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87914852/0/alternet~Feeling-Intense-Emotions-Doesnt-Make-You-Crazy%e2%80%94But-Thats-Not-What-Big-Pharma-Wants-You-to-Think

In a new book, Dr. Julie Holland argues that pharmaceutical companies target women and medicate their emotions.

In 2014, a greatdeal of ink was spilled about the need to stop calling women crazy. Though dismissing women as emotional and irrational is hardly a new phenomenon, a Washington Postop-ed by dating coach Harris O’Malley provided the fodder for a thousand blog posts on the subject. As O’Malley writes, “It’s a form of gaslighting—telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way they do.”

According to Julie Holland, a psychiatrist who has had her own Manhattan practice for 20 years, this sort of minimizing attitude does serious damage. Not only does it hurt women’s self-esteem, but it leads to women being diagnosed and medicated for psychiatric disorders at higher rates than men. In her new book Moody Bitches, Holland looks at how pharmaceutical industry ads target women, the hormonal differences between genders and our long, dark history of medicating women’s emotions. She shared her findings with AlterNet in a telephone interview, which has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Allegra Kirkland: Why did you decide to call your book Moody Bitches? Is it a reclamation of language that’s traditionally been used to denigrate women?

Julie Holland: First of all, it was really a joke. I thought it was funny and so did other people I spoke to. Most of my patients are women. I certainly don’t typically call women bitches. Part of it was reclamation for sure. That was important to me. If anyone’s going to call me a bitch I want it to be me.…It is a sort of bigger message that it’s our birthright to be emotionally expressive—to feel deeply and to express what we’re feeling honestly. I really believe that not only would women be better off if they did a little more of this, but the world would be better off if women aren’t squelching a big part of them, and if men weren’t squelching that part of themselves too.

AK: The point of your book and your New York Times op-edis that women should feel okay experiencing strong emotions—that it’s perfectly natural and can even be beneficial for us. But that message also applies to men.

JH: It absolutely applies to men. For sure.

AK: And men are bound by such strict definitions of how to behave in an appropriate “masculine” way.

JH: Right. This is totally about the suppression of the feminine, not necessarily the suppression of women. I’m sorry to use this word, but it’s about the yin as opposed to the yang. There’s a receptive energy and there’s a penetrative energy. We’re all trying to be more penetrative and we’re suppressing a lot of our sensitivity and intuition and empathy. I don’t know to what end. It seems to me that it’s not doing women any good and it’s not doing society any good. Our world is imbalanced and there’s a lot of penetrative energy: missiles and guns and rape and corporate greed and malfeasance. We need more feminine energy and we need to own that. I’m not suggesting that people who need psychiatric medications throw them away. That is definitely not my message at all.

First of all, I worked at Bellevue for nine years in the psychiatric emergency room and I saw many very sick patients. And I’ve had a private practice for 20 years in Manhattan where I’ve seen all kinds of people who really can’t get by without medication, be it anti-anxiety meds or sleeping pills. But I’m absolutely also seeing a trend where there’s a lower threshold for getting on medication, there’s a much lower threshold for staying on medicine. People are getting on and staying for decades on medicines that were studied for less then a year. These are medicines that are not approved to be taken for decades. With Prozac, there are people who have been on it since the ‘80s. And we’ve learned how difficult it is for some of these people to get off their meds. There is an absolute withdrawal syndrome…that isn’t always discussed. Keep in mind that 80 percent of psychiatric medications in America are not prescribed by psychiatrists.

AK: Right, you mention in the book that they’re prescribed by general practitioners.

JH: It’s also just the new normal. The more women who are on meds, the more it’s in the mix, it’s common, you have friends who are taking them, your doctor’s talking about them, you see all these ads for all these different meds. Did you see the Apple Watch commercial where at the very beginning of this beautiful, glossy video they show you like 20 different versions of the watch? So right away you’re not thinking, Should I get a watch or not? You’re thinking, Should I get the silver one or the white one? You’re already advancing the conversation....We’re seeing so many ads and people have so many friends on meds and it’s so easy to just get them from a doctor that it’s turning from, Should I be on psychiatric medication, to Which one should I take? So that’s new. I’ve watched it develop over 20 years and it’s really alarming.

AK: There’s a long history of women being medicated and even institutionalized for invented illnesses like hysteria and frigidity. Do you see the high rates of psychiatric drug prescriptions for women as part of that historical continuum or is this something new?

JH: What I’m starting to see more and more are these ads. There are great websites for ads from the ‘50s and ‘60s, not just targeting women. Remember at that time Big Pharma could only advertise to doctors. So they’re advertising to doctors basically saying, If this patient is calling you too much and bugging you, here’s a medicine that will get her to stop.

The ads now feature everyday women with everyday problems. First of all, there was 9/11, and there’s no question that led to an increase in money spent on advertising, targeting women who were scared, who are having a normal response to an unnatural event. The ads were completely targeting them. There was one that just read, “Millions can be helped by Paxil.”

AK: Which is an incredibly vague statement.

JH: Right. And there were just words: "worry," "anxiety," with a picture of a woman clutching her handbag walking down a city street. It was genius. It was evil genius, but it was genius. And now what they’re doing is killing me. I don’t know if you’ve seen those binge eating disorder ads. Shire makes Adderall, which is generic now, so the only brand amphetamine Shire has left is Vyvanse, which is a medicine for ADHD. It’s an amphetamine just like Adderall but it lasts 12, 13 hours. They paid some doctors and they paid for a full-page ad in the journal that the “study” ran in, and it says in the journal that they also paid the writers and the editors. So they have this Shire-paid, really crappy study showing that at high dosage every single day for weeks, Vyvanse separates out from placebo. Basically, they show that if you give a woman high-dose amphetamines every day, she will binge less.

They have ads where they show a woman surrounded by pizza and hamburgers and donuts and it says, "If you eat more than you want to and you feel guilty afterwards, you may have this disorder." Which is sort of like saying, "If you’re a woman, you have this."

First of all, if you’re not on the pill and you’re not on SSRIs, you’re going to go through a certain day or two when you’re eating more carbs or sweets before your period. They have ads for doctors where they say "binge eating disorder is a shameful disorder and your patient may not volunteer this information so be sure to ask whether they’re eating too much and feeling guilty about it." Fucking Shire. It’s not bad enough that all of these kids are taking their meds. They want to get some women hooked on speed before their patent expires. These are addictive medicines. … And there’s no evidence that this “disorder” has any pharmacological basis that needs to be medicated.

AK: You write that psychiatric drug prescription rates are highest for women between the ages of 35 and 64. This overlaps with the time when women are most likely to be raising families and at the peak of their careers. Do you think women are trying to handle all of these stressors and that’s why they are asking for and receiving psychiatric medications at higher rates?

JH: This is not going to go over well, but I’m going to say a couple of things. First of all, perimenopause symptoms in terms of insomnia, irritability and mood changes happen all through your 40s. People have this idea that menopause is a one-day event that occurs some time in your mid-50s. It’s not. It’s a marathon of symptoms through most of your 40s, into your 50s; it can last 7-14 years.

The other issue is that my practice is full of women in their late 30s and early 40s who would like a child. Maybe they’re not dying to be married, but they’d like a child. And they would prefer it to be in a monogamous relationship. And they’re living in New York City where guys have a shelf life ‘til they are 50 and no one really wants to commit because it’s possible they can upgrade somewhere else. And they’re not happy. They’re freaking out because this is something they always thought they were going to have and they wanted but they’re not getting.

So one thing I came across in the three years of researching this book is that there is evidence suggesting that SSRIs are interfering with mating. We already know that contraceptives totally interfere with mating, but it turns out that SSRIs also do so. I have so many patients that are on an SSRI and an oral contraceptive. In New York City that is a very common combination of medication, and it has a real impact on mating and sexuality. I’m afraid it’s this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where people are unhappy because they’re not mating, but they’re on drugs that completely interfere with their ability to mate.

AK: The American Psychiatric Association says men are much less likely to seek treatment for anxiety and depression. Could that skew the rates at which women are diagnosed and medicated?

JH: If you look at other cultures there isn’t this two-to-one difference. There does seem to be a definite issue with hormones, in that if you look at kids’ rates of diagnosis of depression, or if you look at post-menopausal women versus men in that age group there’s not this two-to-one difference. But there is that difference when women are cycling, say from around 12 to 55.

AK: Two-to-one difference in terms of rates of diagnosis?

JH: Yes. There’s no question that men are more reluctant to seek psychiatric help. That’s always an understanding in psychiatric care that there are a lot of men who are undiagnosed who really need treatment but aren’t getting it because there is still a lot of stigma there. There’s very little of that for women. But it is this suppression of the feminine that’s at play.

AK: In some of the responses to your op-ed, some people took issue with framing mental health issues in relation to gender because, of course, not all men and women are the same. There are plenty of sensitive, intuitive guys and plenty of women who have no patience for the sob stories of others. Hormones obviously play a role, but how much can really be attributed to biology versus culture and nurture?

JH: You can’t really pick them apart. A 300-page book is very different than an 800- to 900-word op-ed.…There were major things I wanted in that piece that got cut out. Like I said in the beginning, there is the feminine, this yin and yang, in everyone. Not one person is all feminine or all masculine; we’re all a mix. Gender is fluid. I understand that. But I have to make some generalities. I’d say that everything I say in Moody Bitches that isn’t about hormones applies to both men and women. I think that the suppression of the feminine is a problem in both genders and the world needs more yin energy.

AK: I guess the only other concern is that it can end up reinforcing sexist stereotypes. Back when Hillary Clinton was running in 2008, members of the press actually asked if we could have a female president because she might get moody during her period. Maybe that connection could be reinforced in people’s minds?

JH: The other thing I’d say is that moody doesn’t necessarily mean hysterical. That someone can be emotionally expressive is not a bad thing. That’s sort of the message people are missing here. I’m sorry for the shorthand; I just didn’t think the title "emotionally expressive women" would sell books. But that’s what I’m talking about. The idea that a woman who is in tune with her body and knows how she feels and can speak her mind about it, that is scary to men. Emotionally expressive does not mean unstable.

AK:Some responses to your piece expressed concern that people who do genuinely need psychiatric help or medication would be discouraged because they’ll think they can just get through it or that their feelings are within the range of normal. So where do we draw the line?

JH: I am not anti-medication in the right situations. These pills work. They make people feel happier and more relaxed. I get why people take them. But I am suggesting that there are healthier ways that are less of a quick fix that I think some of these people who are on meds should try. The whole survival guide section of my book is about that. You can add all these things to meds, or you can do them instead of taking meds. This idea that you’re going to go to your internist or family doctor and get the same thing from them in six minutes that you get from talking to a therapist for an hour-long initial evaluation is ludicrous. You have to find out what the family history is, what the genetics are, whether there’s been any medication use in the past and what the response has been. I fear people are taking it less seriously.

The other thing that I would say is I have patients who take a little dose of SSRIs just in the week before their periods; I have patients who take medications during the winter but not the rest of the year. You don’t have to take a daily dose for years on end just because you have these phases where your mood is changing. You can take a more targeted approach instead of this blanket method. But obviously there are people who really do need their medication and I do not want to encourage them to man up. What I’m saying is, don’t repress or be scared to be sad or upset. The only reason we’re repressing all these feelings is for the comfort of other people, and I think that’s a huge problem.

For a record of all of Dr. Holland’s sources, see the notes section on moodybitches.com.

In a new book, Dr. Julie Holland argues that pharmaceutical companies target women and medicate their emotions.

In 2014, a greatdeal of ink was spilled about the need to stop calling women crazy. Though dismissing women as emotional and irrational is hardly a new phenomenon, a Washington Postop-ed by dating coach Harris O’Malley provided the fodder for a thousand blog posts on the subject. As O’Malley writes, “It’s a form of gaslighting—telling women that their feelings are just wrong, that they don’t have the right to feel the way they do.”

According to Julie Holland, a psychiatrist who has had her own Manhattan practice for 20 years, this sort of minimizing attitude does serious damage. Not only does it hurt women’s self-esteem, but it leads to women being diagnosed and medicated for psychiatric disorders at higher rates than men. In her new book Moody Bitches, Holland looks at how pharmaceutical industry ads target women, the hormonal differences between genders and our long, dark history of medicating women’s emotions. She shared her findings with AlterNet in a telephone interview, which has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Allegra Kirkland: Why did you decide to call your book Moody Bitches? Is it a reclamation of language that’s traditionally been used to denigrate women?

Julie Holland: First of all, it was really a joke. I thought it was funny and so did other people I spoke to. Most of my patients are women. I certainly don’t typically call women bitches. Part of it was reclamation for sure. That was important to me. If anyone’s going to call me a bitch I want it to be me.…It is a sort of bigger message that it’s our birthright to be emotionally expressive—to feel deeply and to express what we’re feeling honestly. I really believe that not only would women be better off if they did a little more of this, but the world would be better off if women aren’t squelching a big part of them, and if men weren’t squelching that part of themselves too.

AK: The point of your book and your New York Times op-edis that women should feel okay experiencing strong emotions—that it’s perfectly natural and can even be beneficial for us. But that message also applies to men.

JH: It absolutely applies to men. For sure.

AK: And men are bound by such strict definitions of how to behave in an appropriate “masculine” way.

JH: Right. This is totally about the suppression of the feminine, not necessarily the suppression of women. I’m sorry to use this word, but it’s about the yin as opposed to the yang. There’s a receptive energy and there’s a penetrative energy. We’re all trying to be more penetrative and we’re suppressing a lot of our sensitivity and intuition and empathy. I don’t know to what end. It seems to me that it’s not doing women any good and it’s not doing society any good. Our world is imbalanced and there’s a lot of penetrative energy: missiles and guns and rape and corporate greed and malfeasance. We need more feminine energy and we need to own that. I’m not suggesting that people who need psychiatric medications throw them away. That is definitely not my message at all.

First of all, I worked at Bellevue for nine years in the psychiatric emergency room and I saw many very sick patients. And I’ve had a private practice for 20 years in Manhattan where I’ve seen all kinds of people who really can’t get by without medication, be it anti-anxiety meds or sleeping pills. But I’m absolutely also seeing a trend where there’s a lower threshold for getting on medication, there’s a much lower threshold for staying on medicine. People are getting on and staying for decades on medicines that were studied for less then a year. These are medicines that are not approved to be taken for decades. With Prozac, there are people who have been on it since the ‘80s. And we’ve learned how difficult it is for some of these people to get off their meds. There is an absolute withdrawal syndrome…that isn’t always discussed. Keep in mind that 80 percent of psychiatric medications in America are not prescribed by psychiatrists.

AK: Right, you mention in the book that they’re prescribed by general practitioners.

JH: It’s also just the new normal. The more women who are on meds, the more it’s in the mix, it’s common, you have friends who are taking them, your doctor’s talking about them, you see all these ads for all these different meds. Did you see the Apple Watch commercial where at the very beginning of this beautiful, glossy video they show you like 20 different versions of the watch? So right away you’re not thinking, Should I get a watch or not? You’re thinking, Should I get the silver one or the white one? You’re already advancing the conversation....We’re seeing so many ads and people have so many friends on meds and it’s so easy to just get them from a doctor that it’s turning from, Should I be on psychiatric medication, to Which one should I take? So that’s new. I’ve watched it develop over 20 years and it’s really alarming.

AK: There’s a long history of women being medicated and even institutionalized for invented illnesses like hysteria and frigidity. Do you see the high rates of psychiatric drug prescriptions for women as part of that historical continuum or is this something new?

JH: What I’m starting to see more and more are these ads. There are great websites for ads from the ‘50s and ‘60s, not just targeting women. Remember at that time Big Pharma could only advertise to doctors. So they’re advertising to doctors basically saying, If this patient is calling you too much and bugging you, here’s a medicine that will get her to stop.

The ads now feature everyday women with everyday problems. First of all, there was 9/11, and there’s no question that led to an increase in money spent on advertising, targeting women who were scared, who are having a normal response to an unnatural event. The ads were completely targeting them. There was one that just read, “Millions can be helped by Paxil.”

AK: Which is an incredibly vague statement.

JH: Right. And there were just words: "worry," "anxiety," with a picture of a woman clutching her handbag walking down a city street. It was genius. It was evil genius, but it was genius. And now what they’re doing is killing me. I don’t know if you’ve seen those binge eating disorder ads. Shire makes Adderall, which is generic now, so the only brand amphetamine Shire has left is Vyvanse, which is a medicine for ADHD. It’s an amphetamine just like Adderall but it lasts 12, 13 hours. They paid some doctors and they paid for a full-page ad in the journal that the “study” ran in, and it says in the journal that they also paid the writers and the editors. So they have this Shire-paid, really crappy study showing that at high dosage every single day for weeks, Vyvanse separates out from placebo. Basically, they show that if you give a woman high-dose amphetamines every day, she will binge less.

They have ads where they show a woman surrounded by pizza and hamburgers and donuts and it says, "If you eat more than you want to and you feel guilty afterwards, you may have this disorder." Which is sort of like saying, "If you’re a woman, you have this."

First of all, if you’re not on the pill and you’re not on SSRIs, you’re going to go through a certain day or two when you’re eating more carbs or sweets before your period. They have ads for doctors where they say "binge eating disorder is a shameful disorder and your patient may not volunteer this information so be sure to ask whether they’re eating too much and feeling guilty about it." Fucking Shire. It’s not bad enough that all of these kids are taking their meds. They want to get some women hooked on speed before their patent expires. These are addictive medicines. … And there’s no evidence that this “disorder” has any pharmacological basis that needs to be medicated.

AK: You write that psychiatric drug prescription rates are highest for women between the ages of 35 and 64. This overlaps with the time when women are most likely to be raising families and at the peak of their careers. Do you think women are trying to handle all of these stressors and that’s why they are asking for and receiving psychiatric medications at higher rates?

JH: This is not going to go over well, but I’m going to say a couple of things. First of all, perimenopause symptoms in terms of insomnia, irritability and mood changes happen all through your 40s. People have this idea that menopause is a one-day event that occurs some time in your mid-50s. It’s not. It’s a marathon of symptoms through most of your 40s, into your 50s; it can last 7-14 years.

The other issue is that my practice is full of women in their late 30s and early 40s who would like a child. Maybe they’re not dying to be married, but they’d like a child. And they would prefer it to be in a monogamous relationship. And they’re living in New York City where guys have a shelf life ‘til they are 50 and no one really wants to commit because it’s possible they can upgrade somewhere else. And they’re not happy. They’re freaking out because this is something they always thought they were going to have and they wanted but they’re not getting.

So one thing I came across in the three years of researching this book is that there is evidence suggesting that SSRIs are interfering with mating. We already know that contraceptives totally interfere with mating, but it turns out that SSRIs also do so. I have so many patients that are on an SSRI and an oral contraceptive. In New York City that is a very common combination of medication, and it has a real impact on mating and sexuality. I’m afraid it’s this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy where people are unhappy because they’re not mating, but they’re on drugs that completely interfere with their ability to mate.

AK: The American Psychiatric Association says men are much less likely to seek treatment for anxiety and depression. Could that skew the rates at which women are diagnosed and medicated?

JH: If you look at other cultures there isn’t this two-to-one difference. There does seem to be a definite issue with hormones, in that if you look at kids’ rates of diagnosis of depression, or if you look at post-menopausal women versus men in that age group there’s not this two-to-one difference. But there is that difference when women are cycling, say from around 12 to 55.

AK: Two-to-one difference in terms of rates of diagnosis?

JH: Yes. There’s no question that men are more reluctant to seek psychiatric help. That’s always an understanding in psychiatric care that there are a lot of men who are undiagnosed who really need treatment but aren’t getting it because there is still a lot of stigma there. There’s very little of that for women. But it is this suppression of the feminine that’s at play.

AK: In some of the responses to your op-ed, some people took issue with framing mental health issues in relation to gender because, of course, not all men and women are the same. There are plenty of sensitive, intuitive guys and plenty of women who have no patience for the sob stories of others. Hormones obviously play a role, but how much can really be attributed to biology versus culture and nurture?

JH: You can’t really pick them apart. A 300-page book is very different than an 800- to 900-word op-ed.…There were major things I wanted in that piece that got cut out. Like I said in the beginning, there is the feminine, this yin and yang, in everyone. Not one person is all feminine or all masculine; we’re all a mix. Gender is fluid. I understand that. But I have to make some generalities. I’d say that everything I say in Moody Bitches that isn’t about hormones applies to both men and women. I think that the suppression of the feminine is a problem in both genders and the world needs more yin energy.

AK: I guess the only other concern is that it can end up reinforcing sexist stereotypes. Back when Hillary Clinton was running in 2008, members of the press actually asked if we could have a female president because she might get moody during her period. Maybe that connection could be reinforced in people’s minds?

JH: The other thing I’d say is that moody doesn’t necessarily mean hysterical. That someone can be emotionally expressive is not a bad thing. That’s sort of the message people are missing here. I’m sorry for the shorthand; I just didn’t think the title "emotionally expressive women" would sell books. But that’s what I’m talking about. The idea that a woman who is in tune with her body and knows how she feels and can speak her mind about it, that is scary to men. Emotionally expressive does not mean unstable.

AK:Some responses to your piece expressed concern that people who do genuinely need psychiatric help or medication would be discouraged because they’ll think they can just get through it or that their feelings are within the range of normal. So where do we draw the line?

JH: I am not anti-medication in the right situations. These pills work. They make people feel happier and more relaxed. I get why people take them. But I am suggesting that there are healthier ways that are less of a quick fix that I think some of these people who are on meds should try. The whole survival guide section of my book is about that. You can add all these things to meds, or you can do them instead of taking meds. This idea that you’re going to go to your internist or family doctor and get the same thing from them in six minutes that you get from talking to a therapist for an hour-long initial evaluation is ludicrous. You have to find out what the family history is, what the genetics are, whether there’s been any medication use in the past and what the response has been. I fear people are taking it less seriously.

The other thing that I would say is I have patients who take a little dose of SSRIs just in the week before their periods; I have patients who take medications during the winter but not the rest of the year. You don’t have to take a daily dose for years on end just because you have these phases where your mood is changing. You can take a more targeted approach instead of this blanket method. But obviously there are people who really do need their medication and I do not want to encourage them to man up. What I’m saying is, don’t repress or be scared to be sad or upset. The only reason we’re repressing all these feelings is for the comfort of other people, and I think that’s a huge problem.

For a record of all of Dr. Holland’s sources, see the notes section on moodybitches.com.

Yes, copilot Andreas Lubitz was treated for suicidal thoughts. That doesn't mean we can make blanket statements about depression.

Andreas Lubitz, the copilot authorities claim intentionally downed a plane in the French Alps week, was treated for suicidal tendencies before receiving his pilot's license, the New York Times reports.

German prosecutors said Lubitz was treated by psychotherapists “over a long period of time” but did not provide exact dates. During followup doctors' visits, “no signs of suicidal tendencies or outward aggression were documented,” the Times noted.

French prosecutors claim Lubitz, 27, was at the wheel of Germanwings Airbus A320 jetliner last Tuesday when he set it on course to crash into the mountains in southwest France. The captain was locked out of the cockpit and pleading with Lubitz to open the door in the moments before the fatal crash. All 150 passengers on the plane were killed.

Over the past week, commentary about Lubitz’s emotional health has dominated headlines, with the Daily Mail UK running a front page story titled, “Suicide pilot had a long history with depression. Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?”

Then there is the racial dynamic. If Lubitz were Muslim, would the media be calling this an act of terrorism instead of focusing on his mental health? I certainly believe they would be exploring the terror angle if that were the case, even though authorities have ruled out the possibility of terrorism.

But I want to focus on the troubling portrayals of mental illness I’m observing.

It will not be easy to determine why Lubitz by all accounts purposefully crashed the plane. But social media conversations about this tragedy and headlines like the Daily Mail's are worrisome because they can lead to dangerous stereotypes about depression and suicidal ideation.

Here in the United States, the CDC reports that nearly 39,518 people committed suicide in 2011; most who kill themselves do so with a firearm. According to the World Health Organization, 800,000 people commit suicide each year worldwide. The CDC also reports that 8.3 million people, or 3.7 percent of the U.S population, reported having suicidal thoughts in 2008-2009. A poll in South Korea reports that half of that country's teenagers reported having suicidal thoughts in the first half of 2014.

Given the stigmas around suicide and depression and people's unwillingness to discuss mental health issues publicly, those figures are likely much higher. There is a strong chance that many of us know a friend, family member or acquaintance who has once thought of suicide, or perhaps attempted it. But as far as the fear of aircraft-assisted suicide goes, only 24 out of the 7,244 fatal airplane crashes in the United States from 1993 through 2012 were caused by that method, according to a 2014 study. It is extremely rare.

There are a wide range of reasons that can lead to people ending their own lives or attempting to. But the coverage of the Germanwings crash seems to suggest that people who have experienced suicidal ideation or depression (and have overcome it) should be permanently deemed unfit to take on stressful assignments.

I haven’t been able to find any data that suggests this is true. In fact, the Federal Aviation Agency allows pilots who have been diagnosed with clinical depression to return to their flying careers after successfully undergoing treatment. And if Lubitz were suicidal, it doesn’t mean he would want to harm others. As Michelle Cornette, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology told New York Magazine, only two out of five suicides are murder-suicides. Not only are Lubitz's actions rare, but as Cornette added, "in true homicide-suicides, the primary intent or motive is suicide, and the homicide is secondary."

Bottom line: we may never know the specifics behind Lubitz’s actions or why he chose to kill a plane full of innocent people, but the commentary around his mental health is growing more stigmatizing, harmful and exaggerated by the day.

Yes, copilot Andreas Lubitz was treated for suicidal thoughts. That doesn't mean we can make blanket statements about depression.

Andreas Lubitz, the copilot authorities claim intentionally downed a plane in the French Alps week, was treated for suicidal tendencies before receiving his pilot's license, the New York Times reports.

German prosecutors said Lubitz was treated by psychotherapists “over a long period of time” but did not provide exact dates. During followup doctors' visits, “no signs of suicidal tendencies or outward aggression were documented,” the Times noted.

French prosecutors claim Lubitz, 27, was at the wheel of Germanwings Airbus A320 jetliner last Tuesday when he set it on course to crash into the mountains in southwest France. The captain was locked out of the cockpit and pleading with Lubitz to open the door in the moments before the fatal crash. All 150 passengers on the plane were killed.

Over the past week, commentary about Lubitz’s emotional health has dominated headlines, with the Daily Mail UK running a front page story titled, “Suicide pilot had a long history with depression. Why on Earth was he allowed to fly?”

Then there is the racial dynamic. If Lubitz were Muslim, would the media be calling this an act of terrorism instead of focusing on his mental health? I certainly believe they would be exploring the terror angle if that were the case, even though authorities have ruled out the possibility of terrorism.

But I want to focus on the troubling portrayals of mental illness I’m observing.

It will not be easy to determine why Lubitz by all accounts purposefully crashed the plane. But social media conversations about this tragedy and headlines like the Daily Mail's are worrisome because they can lead to dangerous stereotypes about depression and suicidal ideation.

Here in the United States, the CDC reports that nearly 39,518 people committed suicide in 2011; most who kill themselves do so with a firearm. According to the World Health Organization, 800,000 people commit suicide each year worldwide. The CDC also reports that 8.3 million people, or 3.7 percent of the U.S population, reported having suicidal thoughts in 2008-2009. A poll in South Korea reports that half of that country's teenagers reported having suicidal thoughts in the first half of 2014.

Given the stigmas around suicide and depression and people's unwillingness to discuss mental health issues publicly, those figures are likely much higher. There is a strong chance that many of us know a friend, family member or acquaintance who has once thought of suicide, or perhaps attempted it. But as far as the fear of aircraft-assisted suicide goes, only 24 out of the 7,244 fatal airplane crashes in the United States from 1993 through 2012 were caused by that method, according to a 2014 study. It is extremely rare.

There are a wide range of reasons that can lead to people ending their own lives or attempting to. But the coverage of the Germanwings crash seems to suggest that people who have experienced suicidal ideation or depression (and have overcome it) should be permanently deemed unfit to take on stressful assignments.

I haven’t been able to find any data that suggests this is true. In fact, the Federal Aviation Agency allows pilots who have been diagnosed with clinical depression to return to their flying careers after successfully undergoing treatment. And if Lubitz were suicidal, it doesn’t mean he would want to harm others. As Michelle Cornette, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology told New York Magazine, only two out of five suicides are murder-suicides. Not only are Lubitz's actions rare, but as Cornette added, "in true homicide-suicides, the primary intent or motive is suicide, and the homicide is secondary."

Bottom line: we may never know the specifics behind Lubitz’s actions or why he chose to kill a plane full of innocent people, but the commentary around his mental health is growing more stigmatizing, harmful and exaggerated by the day.

As Iran talks appear to be coming to a close with a successful agreement that would both lead to the lifting of international sanctions and restrictions that would prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, most in the international community are relieved.

Yet Republicans have teamed up with their counterparts in the Israeli political system to do everything they can to obstruct a deal – with tactics such as drafting new sanctions legislation and warning the Iranian leadership that the nuclear agreement will not outlast President Obama.

But this past week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ratcheted up this sabotage to a new level. During a floor speech he gave on March 24th, the senator suggested that Israel “go rogue” and that if they don't they may not survive the next 22 months of the Obama presidency:

McCAIN: The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Watch it:

Recall that McCain is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Republican presidential candidate. His call for a foreign state to openly obstruct U.S. policy and in the process initiate a catastrophic regional war is perhaps unprecedented for someone of his senior position.

As Iran talks appear to be coming to a close with a successful agreement that would both lead to the lifting of international sanctions and restrictions that would prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, most in the international community are relieved.

Yet Republicans have teamed up with their counterparts in the Israeli political system to do everything they can to obstruct a deal – with tactics such as drafting new sanctions legislation and warning the Iranian leadership that the nuclear agreement will not outlast President Obama.

But this past week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ratcheted up this sabotage to a new level. During a floor speech he gave on March 24th, the senator suggested that Israel “go rogue” and that if they don't they may not survive the next 22 months of the Obama presidency:

McCAIN: The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Watch it:

Recall that McCain is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Republican presidential candidate. His call for a foreign state to openly obstruct U.S. policy and in the process initiate a catastrophic regional war is perhaps unprecedented for someone of his senior position.

South African comedian and 'Daily Show' contributor Trevor Noah will take over the show later this year.

After months of rampant speculation, the results are in. The New York Times reported this morning that 31-year-old South African comedian Trevor Noah will take the reins at the Daily Show when host Jon Stewart retires later this year. Noah, who joined the show as a contributor in December 2014, retweeted the link to the Times story as confirmation of the news.

He has made only three appearances on the show since joining the staff, according to BuzzFeed News, making him a much less likely contributor than other potential candidates to replace Stewart, including Jessica Williams. Clips from Noah's appearances are posted below.

South African comedian and 'Daily Show' contributor Trevor Noah will take over the show later this year.

After months of rampant speculation, the results are in. The New York Times reported this morning that 31-year-old South African comedian Trevor Noah will take the reins at the Daily Show when host Jon Stewart retires later this year. Noah, who joined the show as a contributor in December 2014, retweeted the link to the Times story as confirmation of the news.

He has made only three appearances on the show since joining the staff, according to BuzzFeed News, making him a much less likely contributor than other potential candidates to replace Stewart, including Jessica Williams. Clips from Noah's appearances are posted below.

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http://www.alternet.org/belief/ricky-gervais-being-atheist-its-just-supernatural-thing-i-dont-buyRicky Gervais on Being an Atheist: ‘It’s Just the Supernatural Thing I Don’t Buy’http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87952719/0/alternet~Ricky-Gervais-on-Being-an-Atheist-%e2%80%98It%e2%80%99s-Just-the-Supernatural-Thing-I-Don%e2%80%99t-Buy%e2%80%99

'I just don’t believe there’s a God. That’s all there is to it.”

In an interview with the New York Daily News to promote the one-hour series finale of his television show “Derek,” comedian Ricky Gervais discussed his atheism, saying he has a problem with the “supernatural thing.”

The controversial television star who famously tweeted, “Everyone has the right to believe anything they want. And everyone else has the right to find it fucking ridiculous,” explained that he grew up loving Jesus.

“Listen, I loved Jesus growing up,” Gervais said. “He was a kind man who cared about the poor and stuck up for them, all that. It’s just the supernatural thing I don’t buy. He’s a great role model.”

Gervais said, “I think people think 'atheist' means you’re this angry militant who runs into churches and says, ‘All of you are going to die, stop this!’ I like Christmas, I like carols. I just don’t believe there’s a God. That’s all there is to it.”

Gervais explained that what he does believe in is the right to euthanasia, and complained about those who oppose it for others based upon their own religious convictions.

“I’m all for dignity in dying,” he said. “I think if someone’s just had enough, there’s no hope and they’re in pain…I don’t know how anyone could oppose someone’s choice and right over whether they continue living or not. There’s so many misunderstandings about it and I don’t understand the anger that people don’t understand that this is beautiful and merciful and right.”

“I retweeted this awful thing, this religious thing — ‘If you euthanize someone in terrible agony, it’s deprived them of the privilege of the grace of God to suffer’ — and I just think what a twisted evil, thought process that is,” he lamented. “To impose your beliefs on another human being in terrible pain and suffering and agony and trauma, and you’re telling them that it’s cowardly not to live through that hopelessness and fear and pain — it disgusts me.”

In an interview with the New York Daily News to promote the one-hour series finale of his television show “Derek,” comedian Ricky Gervais discussed his atheism, saying he has a problem with the “supernatural thing.”

The controversial television star who famously tweeted, “Everyone has the right to believe anything they want. And everyone else has the right to find it fucking ridiculous,” explained that he grew up loving Jesus.

“Listen, I loved Jesus growing up,” Gervais said. “He was a kind man who cared about the poor and stuck up for them, all that. It’s just the supernatural thing I don’t buy. He’s a great role model.”

Gervais said, “I think people think 'atheist' means you’re this angry militant who runs into churches and says, ‘All of you are going to die, stop this!’ I like Christmas, I like carols. I just don’t believe there’s a God. That’s all there is to it.”

Gervais explained that what he does believe in is the right to euthanasia, and complained about those who oppose it for others based upon their own religious convictions.

“I’m all for dignity in dying,” he said. “I think if someone’s just had enough, there’s no hope and they’re in pain…I don’t know how anyone could oppose someone’s choice and right over whether they continue living or not. There’s so many misunderstandings about it and I don’t understand the anger that people don’t understand that this is beautiful and merciful and right.”

“I retweeted this awful thing, this religious thing — ‘If you euthanize someone in terrible agony, it’s deprived them of the privilege of the grace of God to suffer’ — and I just think what a twisted evil, thought process that is,” he lamented. “To impose your beliefs on another human being in terrible pain and suffering and agony and trauma, and you’re telling them that it’s cowardly not to live through that hopelessness and fear and pain — it disgusts me.”

The victim recorded the assault on her cell phone because she wanted the cops to believe her.

A south Florida parole officer has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a woman whose probation he was supervising, WSVN reports.

Coral Springs police say Zachary Thomas Bailey, 50, used his position to sexually assault the victim. During two visits to the victim's home, Bailey allegedly forced himself on the woman while her daughter was in the other room.

Lieutenant Joe McCue said that Bailey blocked the victim from leaving the bathroom during his first visit and grabbed her genitals. "The first time he went there, he said he needed to check out the bedroom," said McCue. "While in the bedroom, Mr. Bailey did sexually batter the victim by putting his hands down the front of her pants."

During the next visit the following day, Bailey followed the victim into her bedroom and asked her for a massage. When she refused, Bailey allegedly took his clothes off, put on a condom, forced her onto the bed and raped her.

The victim recorded the assault on her cell phone because she felt it was the only way police would believe her. She feared reporting the rape would result in Bailey writing up a false parole violation.

"The victim said, 'This is rape. This is rape. I don't want you to do this,'" said McCue. "Unfortunately, she was in fear that if she reported this, he would violate her probation and put her back in jail."

The video shows Bailey taking off his clothes and putting on the condom, which he left at the home. "The video is extremely explicit," said the victim's attorney, Bradford Cohen. "It actually shows what her accusations are."

Police will use the condom and video as evidence. Bailey worked for the Department of Corrections before being fired last Wednesday. Coral Springs police are asking any of Bailey's other victims to come forward.

"At this time, we're really uncertain if there's additional victims out there or not. However, if there are additional victims, you need to go to the authorities," said McCue. "Don't be afraid your probation is gonna be violated. It's very important that you come forward."

The victim recorded the assault on her cell phone because she wanted the cops to believe her.

A south Florida parole officer has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a woman whose probation he was supervising, WSVN reports.

Coral Springs police say Zachary Thomas Bailey, 50, used his position to sexually assault the victim. During two visits to the victim's home, Bailey allegedly forced himself on the woman while her daughter was in the other room.

Lieutenant Joe McCue said that Bailey blocked the victim from leaving the bathroom during his first visit and grabbed her genitals. "The first time he went there, he said he needed to check out the bedroom," said McCue. "While in the bedroom, Mr. Bailey did sexually batter the victim by putting his hands down the front of her pants."

During the next visit the following day, Bailey followed the victim into her bedroom and asked her for a massage. When she refused, Bailey allegedly took his clothes off, put on a condom, forced her onto the bed and raped her.

The victim recorded the assault on her cell phone because she felt it was the only way police would believe her. She feared reporting the rape would result in Bailey writing up a false parole violation.

"The victim said, 'This is rape. This is rape. I don't want you to do this,'" said McCue. "Unfortunately, she was in fear that if she reported this, he would violate her probation and put her back in jail."

The video shows Bailey taking off his clothes and putting on the condom, which he left at the home. "The video is extremely explicit," said the victim's attorney, Bradford Cohen. "It actually shows what her accusations are."

Police will use the condom and video as evidence. Bailey worked for the Department of Corrections before being fired last Wednesday. Coral Springs police are asking any of Bailey's other victims to come forward.

"At this time, we're really uncertain if there's additional victims out there or not. However, if there are additional victims, you need to go to the authorities," said McCue. "Don't be afraid your probation is gonna be violated. It's very important that you come forward."

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http://www.alternet.org/culture/millennials-have-no-roadmap-adulthoodMillennials Have No Roadmap to Adulthoodhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87958470/0/alternet~Millennials-Have-No-Roadmap-to-Adulthood

My parents and grandparents knew just what kind of adults they should be at 25. I don’t, but it’s not my fault.

Life is often referred to as a highway, to borrow from Tom Cochrane, and for my generation that hasn’t changed.

“Adulthood today lacks a well-defined roadmap,” writes Steven Mintz, in his forthcoming book, The Prime of Life. “Today, individuals must define or negotiate their roles and relationships without clear rules or precedents to follow.”

This is especially true for us millennials, who are the product of a terrible economy that has required us to hit the emergency button in our lives. But it’s becoming evident that we have been given a roadmap to a road we are not even on and then we're blamed for going in the wrong direction.

I recently turned 25 and I am failing at being an adult. I don’t see myself buying a house anytime soon or investing in property. I don’t want to have kids anytime soon because I honestly don’t know how I afford to feed myself half the time, let alone a child. And the only person I want to marry is the barista at the cafe by my house, but I haven’t even told him my name.

Traditionally, by 25 we are expected to have accomplished, or at least gotten close to accomplishing, five pillars of “adulthood”: having children, graduating from college, getting married, finding a career and buying a home. It’s no wonder that, since turning 25, I find myself having daily anxieties about not being the kind of adult my parents or grandparents were.

The Great Recession made us boomerang back home or stay in school to remain afloat during the storm. While this situation seemed to make us too reliant on parents or other support systems, it isn’t like millennials weren’t trying. I mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want to be completely independent? We aren’t complete failures, we’re just delayed and it’s really not our fault.

On the surface, this new adulthood may seem selfish and narcissistic. While I agree that my generation may be a tad self-obsessed, primarily due to the advent of social media, this new adulthood will potentially create a better world.

According to the Pew Research Center series “Millennials: A portrait of generation next," we are a group that is confident, connected and open to change even in the face of adversity. But we are delayed in maturing.

The same study found that we are more racially and ethnically diverse, liberal and, even though 37% of us are unemployed, nine in 10 report having enough money to eventually meet our financial goals.

The author of the report, Jeffrey Arnett wrote a book about “emerging adults,” a demographic 18 to 29 years old, that is experiencing an extended adolescence. This extra time allows young people to “develop skills for daily living, gain a better understanding of who they are and what they want from life and begin to build a foundation for their adult lives.”

While this new stage of development may have pushed us back, that’s not actually a terrible thing, he suggests. Due to more time to think and explore, we’ve become better people and know what we want and are able to create a better foundation for our futures.

Arnett told the New York Times Magazine in 2013 that emerging adulthood is a time where 20-somethings don’t see themselves as adults and go through: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a characteristic he calls “a sense of possibilities.”

Due to this new stage of exploration, our deadline for getting our acts together is now around 30 or later, and not earlier, like in prior decades. And with longer life expectancies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we are taking our time growing up, since we now have so much more life to live.

So no matter what your thoughts are toward millennials, adulthood is officially delayed with no signs of it reverting back to 1960s standards. It’s just going to take some time for my generation to get where others were years before them.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. And as my mom would say while driving, we’ll get there when we get there.

My parents and grandparents knew just what kind of adults they should be at 25. I don’t, but it’s not my fault.

Life is often referred to as a highway, to borrow from Tom Cochrane, and for my generation that hasn’t changed.

“Adulthood today lacks a well-defined roadmap,” writes Steven Mintz, in his forthcoming book, The Prime of Life. “Today, individuals must define or negotiate their roles and relationships without clear rules or precedents to follow.”

This is especially true for us millennials, who are the product of a terrible economy that has required us to hit the emergency button in our lives. But it’s becoming evident that we have been given a roadmap to a road we are not even on and then we're blamed for going in the wrong direction.

I recently turned 25 and I am failing at being an adult. I don’t see myself buying a house anytime soon or investing in property. I don’t want to have kids anytime soon because I honestly don’t know how I afford to feed myself half the time, let alone a child. And the only person I want to marry is the barista at the cafe by my house, but I haven’t even told him my name.

Traditionally, by 25 we are expected to have accomplished, or at least gotten close to accomplishing, five pillars of “adulthood”: having children, graduating from college, getting married, finding a career and buying a home. It’s no wonder that, since turning 25, I find myself having daily anxieties about not being the kind of adult my parents or grandparents were.

The Great Recession made us boomerang back home or stay in school to remain afloat during the storm. While this situation seemed to make us too reliant on parents or other support systems, it isn’t like millennials weren’t trying. I mean, honestly, who wouldn’t want to be completely independent? We aren’t complete failures, we’re just delayed and it’s really not our fault.

On the surface, this new adulthood may seem selfish and narcissistic. While I agree that my generation may be a tad self-obsessed, primarily due to the advent of social media, this new adulthood will potentially create a better world.

According to the Pew Research Center series “Millennials: A portrait of generation next," we are a group that is confident, connected and open to change even in the face of adversity. But we are delayed in maturing.

The same study found that we are more racially and ethnically diverse, liberal and, even though 37% of us are unemployed, nine in 10 report having enough money to eventually meet our financial goals.

The author of the report, Jeffrey Arnett wrote a book about “emerging adults,” a demographic 18 to 29 years old, that is experiencing an extended adolescence. This extra time allows young people to “develop skills for daily living, gain a better understanding of who they are and what they want from life and begin to build a foundation for their adult lives.”

While this new stage of development may have pushed us back, that’s not actually a terrible thing, he suggests. Due to more time to think and explore, we’ve become better people and know what we want and are able to create a better foundation for our futures.

Arnett told the New York Times Magazine in 2013 that emerging adulthood is a time where 20-somethings don’t see themselves as adults and go through: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a characteristic he calls “a sense of possibilities.”

Due to this new stage of exploration, our deadline for getting our acts together is now around 30 or later, and not earlier, like in prior decades. And with longer life expectancies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we are taking our time growing up, since we now have so much more life to live.

So no matter what your thoughts are toward millennials, adulthood is officially delayed with no signs of it reverting back to 1960s standards. It’s just going to take some time for my generation to get where others were years before them.

So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. And as my mom would say while driving, we’ll get there when we get there.

Killing Jesus - the adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s book premiering on 29 March - is not history. This might seem like an obvious statement, but it bears repeating, given how the three-hour “television event” is being pitched to viewers: as a restrained Biblical history, suitable for believers and non-believers alike.

We rarely think and talk about “Bible movies” as products of artistic interpretation - instead, we often treat them as “historical” or “religious” films. But Exodus is a Ridley Scott movie; Noah is a Darren Aronofsky movie. If we’re to go by the same guidelines here, let’s call Killing Jesus not some generic “history,” but a “Bill O’Reilly movie.”

O’Reilly, the American pundit with a long-running show on conservative Fox TV, is virtually synonymous with “opinionated.” He makes his living using those opinions to bully anyone who disagrees with him, including guests on his show. Recently, O’Reilly’s disregard of facts has been especially well-documented.

A Catholic self-described “traditionalist,” O’Reilly can’t be trusted notto confuse religious interpretation with historical fact. Thus, if we see Killing Jesus as a Bill O’Reilly film, that should remind us that it can’t be an impartial, historical film at the same time.

Much is being made of the show casting a young Muslim actor of Middle Eastern descent as Jesus, possibly in hopes of avoiding charges of Christian bias, or as a way of emphasizing the human qualities of Jesus. (Islam considers Jesus human, and prophetic, but not divine.) Promotional videos tout the “real authenticity” gained by filming in the Moroccan desert. The show’s credibility is buoyed by its association with the National Geographic Channel, which also produced other O’Reilly TV movies, such as Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy.

At least Lincoln and Kennedy are within the scope of recorded modern history. Jesus is not. As the devout Catholic author James Carroll writes in Christ Actually: “the empirically identifiable Jesus, focus of historians’ quest, and the interpreted Jesus of the Gospels, focus of theologians’ contemplation, are not the same Jesus”.

Even the critics are confusing the issue. Bryan Lowry writes of Killing Jesus in Variety: “Along the way there are discreet miracles, but this represents a more historical approach to the material”. More historical than what? Miracles, by definition, no matter how discreet, cannot be counted as fact.

O’Reilly’s telling takes as fact a number of time-worn myths that have been repeatedly disavowed by scholars. Characterizing the apostle Paul as a Christian is an anachronism: Christianity didn’t begin until a century after the crucifixion; Jesus and all his apostles died Jews. Scholars have noted with irony that in depicting the Pharisees as legalistic, hypocritical evildoers, O’Reilly, ironically, picks up on a caricature originally created by Reformation-era Protestants to ridicule Catholics. Even the show’s air date belies its historical, universalist veneer. If Killing Jesus is supposed to be history suitable for Christians and non-Christians, why on earth does it premiere on Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week leading up to Easter?

It may be true that Ridley Scott, whose company helped produce the film, learned from the critical response to Exodus that Bible movies should make greater efforts at Middle Eastern atmospherics. Scott was accused of racism and inaccuracy for casting, for example, John Turturro as the Egyptian Pharoah. But I’d prefer a Bible movie with more greasepaint and special effects that billed itself as the blockbuster entertainment it was over a Middle Eastern-looking Bible movie that thinly masks Gospel theology.

Killing Jesus - the adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s book premiering on 29 March - is not history. This might seem like an obvious statement, but it bears repeating, given how the three-hour “television event” is being pitched to viewers: as a restrained Biblical history, suitable for believers and non-believers alike.

We rarely think and talk about “Bible movies” as products of artistic interpretation - instead, we often treat them as “historical” or “religious” films. But Exodus is a Ridley Scott movie; Noah is a Darren Aronofsky movie. If we’re to go by the same guidelines here, let’s call Killing Jesus not some generic “history,” but a “Bill O’Reilly movie.”

O’Reilly, the American pundit with a long-running show on conservative Fox TV, is virtually synonymous with “opinionated.” He makes his living using those opinions to bully anyone who disagrees with him, including guests on his show. Recently, O’Reilly’s disregard of facts has been especially well-documented.

A Catholic self-described “traditionalist,” O’Reilly can’t be trusted notto confuse religious interpretation with historical fact. Thus, if we see Killing Jesus as a Bill O’Reilly film, that should remind us that it can’t be an impartial, historical film at the same time.

Much is being made of the show casting a young Muslim actor of Middle Eastern descent as Jesus, possibly in hopes of avoiding charges of Christian bias, or as a way of emphasizing the human qualities of Jesus. (Islam considers Jesus human, and prophetic, but not divine.) Promotional videos tout the “real authenticity” gained by filming in the Moroccan desert. The show’s credibility is buoyed by its association with the National Geographic Channel, which also produced other O’Reilly TV movies, such as Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy.

At least Lincoln and Kennedy are within the scope of recorded modern history. Jesus is not. As the devout Catholic author James Carroll writes in Christ Actually: “the empirically identifiable Jesus, focus of historians’ quest, and the interpreted Jesus of the Gospels, focus of theologians’ contemplation, are not the same Jesus”.

Even the critics are confusing the issue. Bryan Lowry writes of Killing Jesus in Variety: “Along the way there are discreet miracles, but this represents a more historical approach to the material”. More historical than what? Miracles, by definition, no matter how discreet, cannot be counted as fact.

O’Reilly’s telling takes as fact a number of time-worn myths that have been repeatedly disavowed by scholars. Characterizing the apostle Paul as a Christian is an anachronism: Christianity didn’t begin until a century after the crucifixion; Jesus and all his apostles died Jews. Scholars have noted with irony that in depicting the Pharisees as legalistic, hypocritical evildoers, O’Reilly, ironically, picks up on a caricature originally created by Reformation-era Protestants to ridicule Catholics. Even the show’s air date belies its historical, universalist veneer. If Killing Jesus is supposed to be history suitable for Christians and non-Christians, why on earth does it premiere on Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week leading up to Easter?

It may be true that Ridley Scott, whose company helped produce the film, learned from the critical response to Exodus that Bible movies should make greater efforts at Middle Eastern atmospherics. Scott was accused of racism and inaccuracy for casting, for example, John Turturro as the Egyptian Pharoah. But I’d prefer a Bible movie with more greasepaint and special effects that billed itself as the blockbuster entertainment it was over a Middle Eastern-looking Bible movie that thinly masks Gospel theology.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/gender/what-happened-when-i-posed-man-twitterWhat Happened When I Posed As a Man on Twitterhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87953895/0/alternet~What-Happened-When-I-Posed-As-a-Man-on-Twitter

For one week, I got to see what it's like to be treated with respect online.

Last weekend I became a man. I’ve dreamed about becoming a man before, wondered what it would be like to have genitalia that hangs, imagined myself free to walk alone with headphones on, fantasized about running at night. I didn’t get to experience that. But I did become a man on Twitter.

My partner and I talk about injustice a lot. He is aware of his male privilege. He is a feminist. He tweets about how we are treated differently:

My handle on Twitter is @hippoinatutu because I identify with those big beautiful hippos in tutus in Fantasia. Body-shaming is never OK with me, and I openly talk about being a fat woman. I am aware that I am fat. I’m also short, yet no one ever feels the need to “disagree” with me by calling a “disgustingly short” person.

I am told I am fat and ugly all the time. I get rape threats regularly, even though I'm also told I'm "too ugly to rape." Even though these people on the Internet are not clever, and aren't saying anything new, it hurts. The online abuse is just a small sliver of what women hear every single day.

We do not just get threatened by faceless eggs on the Internet. We are attacked. We are abused. One in six of us will be assaulted/raped. People murder us. We are not just told to shut up by Twitter handles with four followers, we are shushed by bosses and stifled by media. Senators silence us. We internalize and silence ourselves. We aren’t just told we are fat; we are told we should be ashamed of our bodies by people who love us, people who should know better. Trolls are merely an echo of the harassment we hear every day.

It’s wrong that we cannot speak, even on the Internet, without fearing verbal harassment, rape threats, presumptions about our sex lives. It’s agonizing that I cannot voice my own experience, talk about my pain, because trolls spend hours trying to silence me. I could show you nauseating things, so many screen shots of vile intended insults. But I will give only one an audience here.

Got this one on Christmas.

So I became a man, in the sense that my name is Alex, and I changed my picture to a (presumably) hetero man. I talked to some fellow writers who reminded me about Stephen Colbert’s call for women of color to become “dudebros,” and the powerful results. I decided to try it for one week, doing everything the same way I normally did, only with a male picture.

“Won’t people be surprised by my username?” I asked my partner that evening.

“I don’t think they’ll notice. Once people see a man, they see a man.”

I tried it out:

Using my own face, this kind of tweet came with trolls.

Nothing happened. I was retweeted, some folks favorited my statements, and no one told me I was fat or ugly. No one threatened to rape me. It turned out I hadn’t gone from woman to man, but from object to human.

I was able to end disagreements like this!

I spent the week discussing systemic oppression and race. An intersectional feminist, I dove into rape culture. I talked about the need for police accountability, condemning domestic violence and amplifying other voices. It was almost always without interruption. My voice felt so unrestricted. How beautiful it felt to speak without fear of retribution. I felt such freedom.

For an entire week, I got to see what it is like to be treated with respect. As a man, I could use the same words and be met with discussion, disagreement, or even nothing at all, instead of insults. I became an equal human being, one whose voice deserved to be heard.

Dehumanizing "feminists" and "social justice warriors" also dehumanizes me and so many others because we are not just those labels, we are people.

Something strange happened. I experienced privilege in a way I had not expected. Jessie Hernandez was 17 years old, queer, Latina and killed by police officers in a stolen vehicle. I, along with thousands of others, immediately expressed outrage at her death. I expressed outrage at what I see as a pattern of police brutality against people of color, and to speak her name: Jessie Hernandez, who was killed because of what I see as a broken system.

With millions of Latinas to choose from, a vast community of perspective, Buzzfeed chose “me” to express the outrage at the very top of its piece. I was surprised. Though I have been quoted numerous times, I have never been the first quote, and I had to question “my” white male face sitting at the top. (With a typo, I might add.) Might it not have been for valuable to see a woman? Or a queer woman? Or, heaven forbid, a queer woman of color?

Don’t get me wrong, righteous outrage should be featured front and center, and outrage from white men is not an awful thing to include, but I’m pretty sure my outrage about police brutality is not what we need to amplify the most right now. Like really, really sure.

How it looked with me as male.

Yesterday I awoke anxious. It had been a week. I didn’t really want to change my picture back. For the most part, I had enjoyed the privilege I’d experienced. I enjoyed being a human being.

But I believe that part of the fight is simply to be myself: female, fat, queer, loud, and honest. In order to be honest, I felt my words should be read with my own true face beside them.

I changed it back. I still have the vast privilege of whiteness, and therefore the ability to leave the conversations about race at any time, (though I won’t), but I can no longer speak freely about what it is like living in a culture that supports rapists, that does not punish those who commit assault regularly, statistically against women. I can no longer testify to my own experience without harassment. Like the conch in Lord of the Flies, I have lost the presumed-penis that gives me the right to speak.

So I’ll speak while I can:

Can you hear me when I say it hurts? Can you empathize with my pain? Your rape threats hurt a real person. They remind me of trauma that I have experienced. Do you really wish me to hurt just because I am not a man?

How does denying me my humanity serve you? What do you lose by putting that energy elsewhere? I don't want to yell at you. I don't want to take anything away. I want you to hear me and acknowledge my humanity.

For one week, I got to see what it's like to be treated with respect online.

Last weekend I became a man. I’ve dreamed about becoming a man before, wondered what it would be like to have genitalia that hangs, imagined myself free to walk alone with headphones on, fantasized about running at night. I didn’t get to experience that. But I did become a man on Twitter.

My partner and I talk about injustice a lot. He is aware of his male privilege. He is a feminist. He tweets about how we are treated differently:

My handle on Twitter is @hippoinatutu because I identify with those big beautiful hippos in tutus in Fantasia. Body-shaming is never OK with me, and I openly talk about being a fat woman. I am aware that I am fat. I’m also short, yet no one ever feels the need to “disagree” with me by calling a “disgustingly short” person.

I am told I am fat and ugly all the time. I get rape threats regularly, even though I'm also told I'm "too ugly to rape." Even though these people on the Internet are not clever, and aren't saying anything new, it hurts. The online abuse is just a small sliver of what women hear every single day.

We do not just get threatened by faceless eggs on the Internet. We are attacked. We are abused. One in six of us will be assaulted/raped. People murder us. We are not just told to shut up by Twitter handles with four followers, we are shushed by bosses and stifled by media. Senators silence us. We internalize and silence ourselves. We aren’t just told we are fat; we are told we should be ashamed of our bodies by people who love us, people who should know better. Trolls are merely an echo of the harassment we hear every day.

It’s wrong that we cannot speak, even on the Internet, without fearing verbal harassment, rape threats, presumptions about our sex lives. It’s agonizing that I cannot voice my own experience, talk about my pain, because trolls spend hours trying to silence me. I could show you nauseating things, so many screen shots of vile intended insults. But I will give only one an audience here.

Got this one on Christmas.

So I became a man, in the sense that my name is Alex, and I changed my picture to a (presumably) hetero man. I talked to some fellow writers who reminded me about Stephen Colbert’s call for women of color to become “dudebros,” and the powerful results. I decided to try it for one week, doing everything the same way I normally did, only with a male picture.

“Won’t people be surprised by my username?” I asked my partner that evening.

“I don’t think they’ll notice. Once people see a man, they see a man.”

I tried it out:

Using my own face, this kind of tweet came with trolls.

Nothing happened. I was retweeted, some folks favorited my statements, and no one told me I was fat or ugly. No one threatened to rape me. It turned out I hadn’t gone from woman to man, but from object to human.

I was able to end disagreements like this!

I spent the week discussing systemic oppression and race. An intersectional feminist, I dove into rape culture. I talked about the need for police accountability, condemning domestic violence and amplifying other voices. It was almost always without interruption. My voice felt so unrestricted. How beautiful it felt to speak without fear of retribution. I felt such freedom.

For an entire week, I got to see what it is like to be treated with respect. As a man, I could use the same words and be met with discussion, disagreement, or even nothing at all, instead of insults. I became an equal human being, one whose voice deserved to be heard.

Dehumanizing "feminists" and "social justice warriors" also dehumanizes me and so many others because we are not just those labels, we are people.

Something strange happened. I experienced privilege in a way I had not expected. Jessie Hernandez was 17 years old, queer, Latina and killed by police officers in a stolen vehicle. I, along with thousands of others, immediately expressed outrage at her death. I expressed outrage at what I see as a pattern of police brutality against people of color, and to speak her name: Jessie Hernandez, who was killed because of what I see as a broken system.

With millions of Latinas to choose from, a vast community of perspective, Buzzfeed chose “me” to express the outrage at the very top of its piece. I was surprised. Though I have been quoted numerous times, I have never been the first quote, and I had to question “my” white male face sitting at the top. (With a typo, I might add.) Might it not have been for valuable to see a woman? Or a queer woman? Or, heaven forbid, a queer woman of color?

Don’t get me wrong, righteous outrage should be featured front and center, and outrage from white men is not an awful thing to include, but I’m pretty sure my outrage about police brutality is not what we need to amplify the most right now. Like really, really sure.

How it looked with me as male.

Yesterday I awoke anxious. It had been a week. I didn’t really want to change my picture back. For the most part, I had enjoyed the privilege I’d experienced. I enjoyed being a human being.

But I believe that part of the fight is simply to be myself: female, fat, queer, loud, and honest. In order to be honest, I felt my words should be read with my own true face beside them.

I changed it back. I still have the vast privilege of whiteness, and therefore the ability to leave the conversations about race at any time, (though I won’t), but I can no longer speak freely about what it is like living in a culture that supports rapists, that does not punish those who commit assault regularly, statistically against women. I can no longer testify to my own experience without harassment. Like the conch in Lord of the Flies, I have lost the presumed-penis that gives me the right to speak.

So I’ll speak while I can:

Can you hear me when I say it hurts? Can you empathize with my pain? Your rape threats hurt a real person. They remind me of trauma that I have experienced. Do you really wish me to hurt just because I am not a man?

How does denying me my humanity serve you? What do you lose by putting that energy elsewhere? I don't want to yell at you. I don't want to take anything away. I want you to hear me and acknowledge my humanity.

Instead of confronting the realities of our past head on, we are increasingly turning away from them.

National condemnation of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma has a cruel irony that highlights a painful truth: By singly condemning individual racist acts and refusing to talk openly about our country’s complex relationship to anti-black violence, we allow racial hatred to fester under our noses.

As a nation, we need to do two things in response to the SAE scandal: Take a long hard look at the history of state-sanctioned, anti-black violence, and recognize that this violence has been an integral part of our nation’s culture for quite some time.

When the racist chant that fraternity members sang on their way to a party came to light, condemnation of SAE was understandably swift and sharp: Two fraternity members identified from the video have been expelled. The university has soundly denounced the fraternity’s actions and shut down its campus activities.

In all likelihood, the O.U. SAE members knew their chant was racist. That’s why they sang it in private rather than in public. But this is not really about them, now, is it? This college crisis is about our collective responsibility as a society to address, openly and honestly, tough issues of race. If you think it is O.K. to use the N-word and propone lynching in a song, then a history lesson probably won’t help you. But it can help those of us who do not wish to be racist.

As a nation, we prefer to downplay the integral role racism has played in forming our country. Yet, the choice to publicly minimize or ignore racial violence, both past and present, is a dangerous one that in fact enables violence against black bodies. Think: Madison, New York, Ferguson. It also allows for the image of a black man hanging from a tree to become a witty line in a fraternity chant. But ultimately, the act of ignoring our history damages and delegitimizes the institutions its perpetrators claim to protect.

Ironically, African-Americans once believed Oklahoma was their “promised land.” At the turn of the last century, tens of thousands risked everything in search of freedom there. They instead found themselves violently attacked, lynched like Laura and L. D. Nelson, or driven en masse out of more than 50 towns and cities. Blacks were even expelled from the bucolic college town of Norman, the home of O.U., in 1897. Forgetting this violence and exclusion naturalizes the absence of black people from wide swaths of contemporary Oklahoma.

Moreover, the histories of anti-black violence and migration in Texas and Oklahoma are intertwined. The majority of Oklahoma’s black settlers came from Texas. Parker Rice and Levi Pettit, the students expelled for leading the SAE chant, are from Dallas. Dallas is just down the road from Paris, where Henry Smith was lynched. It is also close to Waco, where Jessie Washington was lynched. Prior to living in Oklahoma, the Nelson family lived in the Waco area. Other black Oklahoma settlers originally lived in Paris and Dallas. And just down the road from all of these cities is Austin, state capital and home of the University of Texas, where President Bill Powers said he would open an investigation into the possibility that the racist SAE chant has been sung at UT as well.

Here’s another lesson: Anti-black sentiment was never just a black people’s problem. In 1919, NAACP President John Shillady, a white man, was beaten by local officials and run out of Austin for trying to organize blacks in that city. We forget these stories at our own risk.

Black Oklahomans and black Texans were also civil rights movement pioneers. Heman Sweatt, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, and George W. McLaurin risked life and livelihood to integrate the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma in the 1940s and 1950s. Their school desegregation lawsuits preceded the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 that should have signaled the death knell for school segregation across the United States.

But before we get too far into specifics, let’s be real, this is not about SAE. It’s also not just about Oklahoma and Texas. To be sure, it is important to reproach the fraternity’s actions. It is equally important, however, to recognize that SAE did not single-handedly produce the narratives of racial hatred that its chant espouses. As Yale English professor Jacqueline Goldsby argues, lynching has been a cultural logic in our nation. And we have yet to really deal with that.

Instead of confronting the realities of our past head on, we are increasingly turning away from them. In February, an Oklahoma House committee voted to ban AP History in public high schools because, the committee claimed, it only teaches the negative side of U.S. history. In 2010, the Texas school board approved a controversial textbook that waters down slavery. Both states echo similar measures in states like Arizona, where teaching ethnic studies in public school has been banned.

Every year we give lectures on African-American history and culture at our respective universities. Painfully, some of them recount the stories of Henry Smith, Jessie Washington and the aforementioned Nelsons, black people accused of committing crimes against whites and, shorn of their constitutional rights, brutally lynched in Texas and Oklahoma. Smith was a black man with a mental disability who was tortured to death in front of a crowd of 10,000 people in Paris, Texas, in 1893. Washington, 18, was burned to death by a crowd of over 15,000 people in Waco, Texas, in 1916. Nelson was raped and lynched by white townspeople alongside her 14-year-old son, L.D., in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1911. The heavy silence that inevitably follows these lectures is often broken by a student, who with raised hand, asks of the crimes alleged against those lynched, “But did they do it?”

The truth is almost 4,000 African-Americans—men, women and children—were lynched in the South between 1877 and 1950. And lynching was not an exclusively Southern phenomenon. Most college students know nothing about this side of America. They have been brought up in a culture that fixates on the false notion that black people are a threat to white safety and security. Their instinct is to try to rationalize lynching as a justifiable, perhaps even an understandable punishment for a crime rather than racial terrorism. What is frightening about this position is a century ago defenders of lynching used the same arguments to protect their right to kill black people.

Lynching and other forms of racial violence are about power—to control and to exclude. In the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, it was used to deny African-Americans full access to the American dream. Indeed this violence often occurred just because African-Americans tried to exercise their rights as citizens. Consider: Jimmie Lee Jackson and countless others who were lynched in the pursuit of the right to vote in places like Selma. Whites also lynched black people to dispossess them from their land in Georgia, Arkansas and Missouri.

The now infamous Sigma Alpha Epsilon chant simply regurgitates the old idea that African-Americans are not legitimate members of American society. “You can hang them from a tree but they won’t sign with SAE,” the damning video shows. Maybe, our college students think it is O.K. to sing racist chants because we unwittingly sanction racism by refusing to talk about the anti-black violence that lingers.

Instead of confronting the realities of our past head on, we are increasingly turning away from them.

National condemnation of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at the University of Oklahoma has a cruel irony that highlights a painful truth: By singly condemning individual racist acts and refusing to talk openly about our country’s complex relationship to anti-black violence, we allow racial hatred to fester under our noses.

As a nation, we need to do two things in response to the SAE scandal: Take a long hard look at the history of state-sanctioned, anti-black violence, and recognize that this violence has been an integral part of our nation’s culture for quite some time.

When the racist chant that fraternity members sang on their way to a party came to light, condemnation of SAE was understandably swift and sharp: Two fraternity members identified from the video have been expelled. The university has soundly denounced the fraternity’s actions and shut down its campus activities.

In all likelihood, the O.U. SAE members knew their chant was racist. That’s why they sang it in private rather than in public. But this is not really about them, now, is it? This college crisis is about our collective responsibility as a society to address, openly and honestly, tough issues of race. If you think it is O.K. to use the N-word and propone lynching in a song, then a history lesson probably won’t help you. But it can help those of us who do not wish to be racist.

As a nation, we prefer to downplay the integral role racism has played in forming our country. Yet, the choice to publicly minimize or ignore racial violence, both past and present, is a dangerous one that in fact enables violence against black bodies. Think: Madison, New York, Ferguson. It also allows for the image of a black man hanging from a tree to become a witty line in a fraternity chant. But ultimately, the act of ignoring our history damages and delegitimizes the institutions its perpetrators claim to protect.

Ironically, African-Americans once believed Oklahoma was their “promised land.” At the turn of the last century, tens of thousands risked everything in search of freedom there. They instead found themselves violently attacked, lynched like Laura and L. D. Nelson, or driven en masse out of more than 50 towns and cities. Blacks were even expelled from the bucolic college town of Norman, the home of O.U., in 1897. Forgetting this violence and exclusion naturalizes the absence of black people from wide swaths of contemporary Oklahoma.

Moreover, the histories of anti-black violence and migration in Texas and Oklahoma are intertwined. The majority of Oklahoma’s black settlers came from Texas. Parker Rice and Levi Pettit, the students expelled for leading the SAE chant, are from Dallas. Dallas is just down the road from Paris, where Henry Smith was lynched. It is also close to Waco, where Jessie Washington was lynched. Prior to living in Oklahoma, the Nelson family lived in the Waco area. Other black Oklahoma settlers originally lived in Paris and Dallas. And just down the road from all of these cities is Austin, state capital and home of the University of Texas, where President Bill Powers said he would open an investigation into the possibility that the racist SAE chant has been sung at UT as well.

Here’s another lesson: Anti-black sentiment was never just a black people’s problem. In 1919, NAACP President John Shillady, a white man, was beaten by local officials and run out of Austin for trying to organize blacks in that city. We forget these stories at our own risk.

Black Oklahomans and black Texans were also civil rights movement pioneers. Heman Sweatt, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, and George W. McLaurin risked life and livelihood to integrate the Universities of Texas and Oklahoma in the 1940s and 1950s. Their school desegregation lawsuits preceded the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 that should have signaled the death knell for school segregation across the United States.

But before we get too far into specifics, let’s be real, this is not about SAE. It’s also not just about Oklahoma and Texas. To be sure, it is important to reproach the fraternity’s actions. It is equally important, however, to recognize that SAE did not single-handedly produce the narratives of racial hatred that its chant espouses. As Yale English professor Jacqueline Goldsby argues, lynching has been a cultural logic in our nation. And we have yet to really deal with that.

Instead of confronting the realities of our past head on, we are increasingly turning away from them. In February, an Oklahoma House committee voted to ban AP History in public high schools because, the committee claimed, it only teaches the negative side of U.S. history. In 2010, the Texas school board approved a controversial textbook that waters down slavery. Both states echo similar measures in states like Arizona, where teaching ethnic studies in public school has been banned.

Every year we give lectures on African-American history and culture at our respective universities. Painfully, some of them recount the stories of Henry Smith, Jessie Washington and the aforementioned Nelsons, black people accused of committing crimes against whites and, shorn of their constitutional rights, brutally lynched in Texas and Oklahoma. Smith was a black man with a mental disability who was tortured to death in front of a crowd of 10,000 people in Paris, Texas, in 1893. Washington, 18, was burned to death by a crowd of over 15,000 people in Waco, Texas, in 1916. Nelson was raped and lynched by white townspeople alongside her 14-year-old son, L.D., in Okemah, Oklahoma, in 1911. The heavy silence that inevitably follows these lectures is often broken by a student, who with raised hand, asks of the crimes alleged against those lynched, “But did they do it?”

The truth is almost 4,000 African-Americans—men, women and children—were lynched in the South between 1877 and 1950. And lynching was not an exclusively Southern phenomenon. Most college students know nothing about this side of America. They have been brought up in a culture that fixates on the false notion that black people are a threat to white safety and security. Their instinct is to try to rationalize lynching as a justifiable, perhaps even an understandable punishment for a crime rather than racial terrorism. What is frightening about this position is a century ago defenders of lynching used the same arguments to protect their right to kill black people.

Lynching and other forms of racial violence are about power—to control and to exclude. In the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, it was used to deny African-Americans full access to the American dream. Indeed this violence often occurred just because African-Americans tried to exercise their rights as citizens. Consider: Jimmie Lee Jackson and countless others who were lynched in the pursuit of the right to vote in places like Selma. Whites also lynched black people to dispossess them from their land in Georgia, Arkansas and Missouri.

The now infamous Sigma Alpha Epsilon chant simply regurgitates the old idea that African-Americans are not legitimate members of American society. “You can hang them from a tree but they won’t sign with SAE,” the damning video shows. Maybe, our college students think it is O.K. to sing racist chants because we unwittingly sanction racism by refusing to talk about the anti-black violence that lingers.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/i-was-helped-female-viagra I Was Helped by Female Viagrahttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87914974/0/alternet~I-Was-Helped-by-Female-Viagra

Whys is there pushback to something women want?

I would say I’m a pretty lucky woman. I have four great kids, a satisfying job, and a tall, dark and handsome husband who makes me feel like the sexiest woman in the world.

The only problem is that I don’t want to have sex. Ever. And the reason why isn’t the four kids, the job or the husband. It’s the chemistry in my brain.

This week marks the 17th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of Viagra, the medication to treat erectile dysfunction. One of the most widely known pharmaceutical drugs in the country, “the little blue pill” has been giving suffering men the ability to get erections for the last 17 years. But no treatment option exists for me.

Last month, the pharmaceutical company Sprout resubmitted the drug flibanserin, or what some call “the female Viagra,” to the FDA for approval. For years, there has been debate from all sides about the treatment, including whether the condition that flibanserin aims to treat – hypoactive sexual arousal disorder (or HSDD) – actually exists. Well, I am one of the 16 million women who live with the condition every day.

I first noticed that my desire was low three years into my new relationship with my current husband. I met Ben as a recent divorcee and the attraction was instant, and powerful. It was like I was a teenager in heat again, which remained constant for years, until one year, I began to notice a dramatic drop in my desire.

I had experienced low desire before, following the births of my children and when my marriage started going downhill. But this was different. This time, there was no psychological issue, nor were there any physical problems going on “down there.” This feeling was like nothing I had experienced before. I loved my husband more than ever. I wanted to want him. And boy, did I try. I ordered weird elixirs off the Internet that were supposed to boost my libido, was deliberate about destressing every day, engaged in flirty texting, and bought sexy lingerie. But I just couldn’t “turn it on.” Think of a pot of water simmering on a stove, but never quite getting hot enough to boil.

While waiting to see my doctor one day, I stumbled on a brochure regarding a clinical trial for women with low desire. As I read the symptoms, I got progressively more concerned – perhaps this was me. I talked with my physician, after which I answered several screening questions, and a physical and emotional review to rule out any relationship issues, physical causes or other possible reasons why I had no desire. And it was confirmed: I was diagnosed with HSDD.

What I learned was that women with HSDD have markedly different characteristics than women with a low libido. In fact, MRI scans of women with the condition show different brain activity than women without it.

And suddenly, everything made so much more sense. I knew in my bones that what was happening to my body was so much more complicated than a problem with my relationship, or some kind of hormonal imbalance. I felt like for the first time, I understood what was happening to me. And even better, there was a potential solution.

I had the opportunity to be a part of one of flibanserin’s trials. Flibanserin is not like Viagra in the way that it stimulates men’s nether regions, but targets the chemistry in the brain that affects sexual response. (In other words, the chemistry that’s out of whack for women with HSDD.) I started the trial and within two weeks noticed a difference. What had previously been “obligatory” sex every other weekend quickly became several times a week – and with my initiation. It was as if someone turned a light switch on; suddenly my desire for sex returned.

And the following eight months were a gift. For the duration of the clinical trial, Ben and I achieved a whole new level of intimacy. Not only did the frequency of sex increase, but the quality of it. And then, the trial ended. I had to return my pills, and just like that, my lack of desire returned.

The FDA’s reasoning for rejecting flibanserin is the concern that the risks outweigh the benefits – specifically, the fact that the treatment makes some women drowsy. (Which is why you take the pill before you go to bed.) In the meantime, Viagra’s potential side effects include sudden vision or hearing loss, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath and edema. How do the benefits outweigh the risks with Viagra, but not when it comes to women’s sexual desire needs? Why are men trusted to make the decision between themselves and their doctor, and to take those potential risks – but not women?

Then there are critics claiming that the condition doesn’t exist, or that women simply have different “desire styles,” which they should deal with on their own. When people deny the condition’s existence, it diminishes women’s real experiences and lives. And that feels incredibly patronizing to me. It’s almost like I’m standing outside of a conversation between a group of people talking about me – but who don’t even acknowledge that I’m there, and have the most valuable thing to say in the matter. How can these “experts” speak of something about which they have no personal experience?

Women had to fight for years to get access to birth control and other reproductive healthcare (and continue to do so). And more than anything, that fight was about having access to choices. Today, men don’t just have Viagra – in fact, they have more than two dozen treatment options to help them with their most common sexual complaint. But women have none. Why is there so much pushback against something that women clearly want and need? Shouldn’t we be fighting to get women access to sexually fulfilling lives? Women with HSDD should not only have a full spectrum of treatment options – both psychotherapy and medication – but most importantly, we should be trusted to make our own health decisions with our doctor about what the best option is for us. I found one that works for me. Shouldn’t I have that choice?

I would say I’m a pretty lucky woman. I have four great kids, a satisfying job, and a tall, dark and handsome husband who makes me feel like the sexiest woman in the world.

The only problem is that I don’t want to have sex. Ever. And the reason why isn’t the four kids, the job or the husband. It’s the chemistry in my brain.

This week marks the 17th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of Viagra, the medication to treat erectile dysfunction. One of the most widely known pharmaceutical drugs in the country, “the little blue pill” has been giving suffering men the ability to get erections for the last 17 years. But no treatment option exists for me.

Last month, the pharmaceutical company Sprout resubmitted the drug flibanserin, or what some call “the female Viagra,” to the FDA for approval. For years, there has been debate from all sides about the treatment, including whether the condition that flibanserin aims to treat – hypoactive sexual arousal disorder (or HSDD) – actually exists. Well, I am one of the 16 million women who live with the condition every day.

I first noticed that my desire was low three years into my new relationship with my current husband. I met Ben as a recent divorcee and the attraction was instant, and powerful. It was like I was a teenager in heat again, which remained constant for years, until one year, I began to notice a dramatic drop in my desire.

I had experienced low desire before, following the births of my children and when my marriage started going downhill. But this was different. This time, there was no psychological issue, nor were there any physical problems going on “down there.” This feeling was like nothing I had experienced before. I loved my husband more than ever. I wanted to want him. And boy, did I try. I ordered weird elixirs off the Internet that were supposed to boost my libido, was deliberate about destressing every day, engaged in flirty texting, and bought sexy lingerie. But I just couldn’t “turn it on.” Think of a pot of water simmering on a stove, but never quite getting hot enough to boil.

While waiting to see my doctor one day, I stumbled on a brochure regarding a clinical trial for women with low desire. As I read the symptoms, I got progressively more concerned – perhaps this was me. I talked with my physician, after which I answered several screening questions, and a physical and emotional review to rule out any relationship issues, physical causes or other possible reasons why I had no desire. And it was confirmed: I was diagnosed with HSDD.

What I learned was that women with HSDD have markedly different characteristics than women with a low libido. In fact, MRI scans of women with the condition show different brain activity than women without it.

And suddenly, everything made so much more sense. I knew in my bones that what was happening to my body was so much more complicated than a problem with my relationship, or some kind of hormonal imbalance. I felt like for the first time, I understood what was happening to me. And even better, there was a potential solution.

I had the opportunity to be a part of one of flibanserin’s trials. Flibanserin is not like Viagra in the way that it stimulates men’s nether regions, but targets the chemistry in the brain that affects sexual response. (In other words, the chemistry that’s out of whack for women with HSDD.) I started the trial and within two weeks noticed a difference. What had previously been “obligatory” sex every other weekend quickly became several times a week – and with my initiation. It was as if someone turned a light switch on; suddenly my desire for sex returned.

And the following eight months were a gift. For the duration of the clinical trial, Ben and I achieved a whole new level of intimacy. Not only did the frequency of sex increase, but the quality of it. And then, the trial ended. I had to return my pills, and just like that, my lack of desire returned.

The FDA’s reasoning for rejecting flibanserin is the concern that the risks outweigh the benefits – specifically, the fact that the treatment makes some women drowsy. (Which is why you take the pill before you go to bed.) In the meantime, Viagra’s potential side effects include sudden vision or hearing loss, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath and edema. How do the benefits outweigh the risks with Viagra, but not when it comes to women’s sexual desire needs? Why are men trusted to make the decision between themselves and their doctor, and to take those potential risks – but not women?

Then there are critics claiming that the condition doesn’t exist, or that women simply have different “desire styles,” which they should deal with on their own. When people deny the condition’s existence, it diminishes women’s real experiences and lives. And that feels incredibly patronizing to me. It’s almost like I’m standing outside of a conversation between a group of people talking about me – but who don’t even acknowledge that I’m there, and have the most valuable thing to say in the matter. How can these “experts” speak of something about which they have no personal experience?

Women had to fight for years to get access to birth control and other reproductive healthcare (and continue to do so). And more than anything, that fight was about having access to choices. Today, men don’t just have Viagra – in fact, they have more than two dozen treatment options to help them with their most common sexual complaint. But women have none. Why is there so much pushback against something that women clearly want and need? Shouldn’t we be fighting to get women access to sexually fulfilling lives? Women with HSDD should not only have a full spectrum of treatment options – both psychotherapy and medication – but most importantly, we should be trusted to make our own health decisions with our doctor about what the best option is for us. I found one that works for me. Shouldn’t I have that choice?

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/video/john-oliver-explains-why-april-fools-day-worstJohn Oliver Explains Why April Fool's Day Is the Worsthttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87934135/0/alternet~John-Oliver-Explains-Why-April-Fools-Day-Is-the-Worst

'April Fools Day is to comedy what St. Patrick's Day is to Irish culture.'

John Oliver does not like April Fools’ Day. As a matter of fact, he believes that “anyone who claims to be excited for April Fools’ Day is probably a sociopath because what they’re really saying is, ‘I can’t wait to hurt the people close to me!’”

As Oliver points out, the 1st of April is the only day of the year when we’re encouraged to humiliate, betray the trust of and generally disappoint our loved ones. Asking his audience to join him in taking the no-prank pledge, he adds, “We do that enough on every other holiday.”

'April Fools Day is to comedy what St. Patrick's Day is to Irish culture.'

John Oliver does not like April Fools’ Day. As a matter of fact, he believes that “anyone who claims to be excited for April Fools’ Day is probably a sociopath because what they’re really saying is, ‘I can’t wait to hurt the people close to me!’”

As Oliver points out, the 1st of April is the only day of the year when we’re encouraged to humiliate, betray the trust of and generally disappoint our loved ones. Asking his audience to join him in taking the no-prank pledge, he adds, “We do that enough on every other holiday.”

Last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live featured a fake commercial that took aim at Starbucks’ recent — and disastrous — campaign to increase racial awareness by having its baristas initiate conversations with patrons about race relations in the United States.

After claiming that the #RaceTogether campaign “was on the right track,” the narrator says that “we at Pep Boys are starting a conversation too. This month, all Pep Boys mechanics are encouraged to start a conversation with you, the customer, about gender and sexual identity as part of Pep Boys’ new ‘#genderflect’ campaign.”

Although the commercial begins as a spot-on criticism of Starbucks, it quickly veers into uncomfortable territory. While attempting to mock the knowledge about gender and sexual identity presumably possessed by the blue collar mechanics employed by Pep Boys, it quickly veers into base stereotypes about members of the LGBT community.

“Listen,” one mechanic says. “I support whatever people want to do, like if you’re a guy, and you want to be a girl, that’s great. But me personally? I could never cut my dick off.”

Later, a mechanic tells a woman that “if you’ve got both parts down there, then be proud. If I had both, I’d be doing myself all day long.”

Another mechanic then walks up to her and says, “You know what my favorite show is? Ellen — and that’s important, because she used to be a man.”

“No, she didn’t,” the customer replies.

“Yes, she did,” the mechanic says, causing the customer to demand to be taken to her car.

Last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live featured a fake commercial that took aim at Starbucks’ recent — and disastrous — campaign to increase racial awareness by having its baristas initiate conversations with patrons about race relations in the United States.

After claiming that the #RaceTogether campaign “was on the right track,” the narrator says that “we at Pep Boys are starting a conversation too. This month, all Pep Boys mechanics are encouraged to start a conversation with you, the customer, about gender and sexual identity as part of Pep Boys’ new ‘#genderflect’ campaign.”

Although the commercial begins as a spot-on criticism of Starbucks, it quickly veers into uncomfortable territory. While attempting to mock the knowledge about gender and sexual identity presumably possessed by the blue collar mechanics employed by Pep Boys, it quickly veers into base stereotypes about members of the LGBT community.

“Listen,” one mechanic says. “I support whatever people want to do, like if you’re a guy, and you want to be a girl, that’s great. But me personally? I could never cut my dick off.”

Later, a mechanic tells a woman that “if you’ve got both parts down there, then be proud. If I had both, I’d be doing myself all day long.”

Another mechanic then walks up to her and says, “You know what my favorite show is? Ellen — and that’s important, because she used to be a man.”

“No, she didn’t,” the customer replies.

“Yes, she did,” the mechanic says, causing the customer to demand to be taken to her car.

An Orange County lawyer's ballot proposal calls for the death of anyone who engages in sodomy in the state.

It's been a long and exhausting week, and my oldest son and I are curled up on the couch together. While he will always be my baby boy, he doesn't fit so easily into my arms these days. At 10 years old, he's already 5-foot-2, and I have to stretch to run my chin over the top of his head. I'm sure it looks awkward, but I don't care. I run my hands through his thick, dark hair. He's been growing it out these days. He saw a picture of a guy with a '60s-style pompadour and decided that is a look he needs to rock. We rub our same-sized feet together as he tells me about something funny one of his favorite YouTubers said about some video game. He's too heavy on top of me, but I ignore it, exactly the way he's probably ignoring how uncomfortable it is to lie on his lumpy mom. Neither of us is willing to give up these moments just yet. A decade of snuggling together isn't enough.

Yet a man in California wants to take a gun and shoot my son in the head.

Matthew G. McLaughlin, an Orange County lawyer, has proposed the "Sodomite Suppression Act," which states that any person willingly engaging in sexual activity with someone of the same gender should be shot in the head. He does say other "convenient" methods of murder would be acceptable.

Now, some might argue that this doesn't have anything to do with my kid. He's 10 years old. These days he's not engaging in sexual acts with anyone. It will be a few years before that's something I have to worry about. So according to McLaughlin, he's probably not a sodomite yet, but he is gay. The people who make him blush, the people he wants to hold hands with, are all boys. He's been identifying as gay since the first grade, never wavering. No one told him he had to be gay or was supposed to be gay. He just is gay. Which brings me to the next part of the Sodomite Suppression Act: criminalizing advocating for gay rights in front of minors.

Since my son is in the habit of advocating for his own rights, I guess he'll just get 10 years in prison instead of a death sentence. My 10-year-old son.

McLaughlin seems to live in that bubble where a lot of haters reside. The evil gays are skulking in the back of society, waiting to steal and infect our children, they think. There are so many things wrong with this thinking that it makes me want to relocate to an island and fill it up with the people I like so I don't have to deal with this kind of thing anymore. The "evil" gays don't need to steal and infect our children, because they already are our children. He is my child.

The baby who learned to dance before he could walk, holding on to the coffee table as he swung his diapered butt back and forth.

The little boy who was scared to go to kindergarten, so we snipped two tassels from his blanket and pinned them to the inside of his school blazer to give him courage.

The bigger boy who came home dusty, dirty, splattered and exhilarated after a game of paintball with his friends.

What about that kid is so terrifying, so threatening, so dangerous, that after he gets his first boyfriend, he deserves a bullet in the brain? The person who would try to deliver that bullet should watch their step, because no matter how big my baby boy gets, I will always be standing in front of him. And it won't just be me. There are a lot of people willing to stand in front of my son: all those who love him and cherish him and celebrate him for the amazing, rapidly growing human being he is. We will not stand down. We will never stand down.

Now, you might be thinking, "Amelia, this isn't going to go anywhere. It's California! It's not like it's going to become law." And you are right. This bill will not become a law (not that anyone is stopping it right now), but that doesn't take away from the fact that McLaughlin and others of his ilk think it should. It doesn't take away from the fact that there are thousands of people in this country just like Matthew McLaughlin, who think a bullet in his head is exactly what my son deserves.

As a mother, I'm chilled to the bone at the thought of it. It also makes me think of the letters I get from parents who tell me that they want to stand up for their gay kids but are scared to. You know what? It is scary. And it's your job. Parents need to speak up. We need to get loud. We need to get fierce. We need to stop being afraid and start being angry. We need to fight for our children's right to love as their heart calls them to love. Our children need to see us do it. They need to see that their lives are just as worthy as all others, that they deserve the right to live.

An Orange County lawyer's ballot proposal calls for the death of anyone who engages in sodomy in the state.

It's been a long and exhausting week, and my oldest son and I are curled up on the couch together. While he will always be my baby boy, he doesn't fit so easily into my arms these days. At 10 years old, he's already 5-foot-2, and I have to stretch to run my chin over the top of his head. I'm sure it looks awkward, but I don't care. I run my hands through his thick, dark hair. He's been growing it out these days. He saw a picture of a guy with a '60s-style pompadour and decided that is a look he needs to rock. We rub our same-sized feet together as he tells me about something funny one of his favorite YouTubers said about some video game. He's too heavy on top of me, but I ignore it, exactly the way he's probably ignoring how uncomfortable it is to lie on his lumpy mom. Neither of us is willing to give up these moments just yet. A decade of snuggling together isn't enough.

Yet a man in California wants to take a gun and shoot my son in the head.

Matthew G. McLaughlin, an Orange County lawyer, has proposed the "Sodomite Suppression Act," which states that any person willingly engaging in sexual activity with someone of the same gender should be shot in the head. He does say other "convenient" methods of murder would be acceptable.

Now, some might argue that this doesn't have anything to do with my kid. He's 10 years old. These days he's not engaging in sexual acts with anyone. It will be a few years before that's something I have to worry about. So according to McLaughlin, he's probably not a sodomite yet, but he is gay. The people who make him blush, the people he wants to hold hands with, are all boys. He's been identifying as gay since the first grade, never wavering. No one told him he had to be gay or was supposed to be gay. He just is gay. Which brings me to the next part of the Sodomite Suppression Act: criminalizing advocating for gay rights in front of minors.

Since my son is in the habit of advocating for his own rights, I guess he'll just get 10 years in prison instead of a death sentence. My 10-year-old son.

McLaughlin seems to live in that bubble where a lot of haters reside. The evil gays are skulking in the back of society, waiting to steal and infect our children, they think. There are so many things wrong with this thinking that it makes me want to relocate to an island and fill it up with the people I like so I don't have to deal with this kind of thing anymore. The "evil" gays don't need to steal and infect our children, because they already are our children. He is my child.

The baby who learned to dance before he could walk, holding on to the coffee table as he swung his diapered butt back and forth.

The little boy who was scared to go to kindergarten, so we snipped two tassels from his blanket and pinned them to the inside of his school blazer to give him courage.

The bigger boy who came home dusty, dirty, splattered and exhilarated after a game of paintball with his friends.

What about that kid is so terrifying, so threatening, so dangerous, that after he gets his first boyfriend, he deserves a bullet in the brain? The person who would try to deliver that bullet should watch their step, because no matter how big my baby boy gets, I will always be standing in front of him. And it won't just be me. There are a lot of people willing to stand in front of my son: all those who love him and cherish him and celebrate him for the amazing, rapidly growing human being he is. We will not stand down. We will never stand down.

Now, you might be thinking, "Amelia, this isn't going to go anywhere. It's California! It's not like it's going to become law." And you are right. This bill will not become a law (not that anyone is stopping it right now), but that doesn't take away from the fact that McLaughlin and others of his ilk think it should. It doesn't take away from the fact that there are thousands of people in this country just like Matthew McLaughlin, who think a bullet in his head is exactly what my son deserves.

As a mother, I'm chilled to the bone at the thought of it. It also makes me think of the letters I get from parents who tell me that they want to stand up for their gay kids but are scared to. You know what? It is scary. And it's your job. Parents need to speak up. We need to get loud. We need to get fierce. We need to stop being afraid and start being angry. We need to fight for our children's right to love as their heart calls them to love. Our children need to see us do it. They need to see that their lives are just as worthy as all others, that they deserve the right to live.

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http://www.alternet.org/media/what-its-be-liberal-guest-right-wing-radioWhat It's Like to Be a Liberal Guest on Right-Wing Radiohttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87914885/0/alternet~What-Its-Like-to-Be-a-Liberal-Guest-on-RightWing-Radio

Many hosts only invite you to their shows so you can be their liberal punching bag.

This past week I found myself at the headquarters of Fox News in midtown Manhattan. I wasn’t there as part of some post-Occupy Wall Street protest; I’d actually been invited to the studio to be a guest on Fox radio. This wasn’t one of those talking-head screaming matches where Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly try to rip the “crazy” liberal guest a new one. Instead, I was invited onto the Fox liberal oasis, the Alan Colmes Show. If you’re not familiar with Colmes, he was the non-Hannity portion of the long-running Fox show Hannity & Colmes. In a brilliant piece of “fair and balanced” casting, the skinny, nerdy-looking Colmes was pitted against squared-jaw Sean Hannity, both to act as his punching bag and to give the liberal perspective on news stories. Because he survived, I guess, they gave him his own radio show.

So last Monday, I trekked to the News Corp building on 46th Street and Sixth Avenue to talk about the state of hate in America and my experience infiltrating hate groups, including white supremacist organizations, the Westboro Baptist Church, and various anti-immigration groups. The show ended up going great. The guest host, Barry Weintraub, was very sympathetic and gave me this wonderful tagline about my work: “Telling tales of extreme hatred with a smile on his face.”

But that’s not always the case when you’re on right-wing radio. It usually ends with the host attacking you and placing the blame of all things liberal on your back. This forces you into the position of defending an entire cross-section of society, even if you’re really just there to promote a book or something. The first time I was on conservative radio, I was booked as a guest on the Michael Medved Show—the conduit for one of America’s top right-wing talk radio hosts. Medved, author of The Golden Turkey Awards, used to be a famous movie reviewer; then, somewhere along the line, he transformed into a staunch conservative and radio host.

Our rapport wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. During commercial breaks I took the opportunity to question him on his statement that Plan 9 From Outer Space, according to The Golden Turkey Awards, was the worst movie of all time. We would chat cordially about movies, and once we were back on the air he’d take digs at me for not being conservative. But I kept it funny and lighthearted, and he seemed genuinely intrigued by some of the weird places I’ve infiltrated. But while Medved wasn’t so bad, his listeners were horrible. When he opened up the lines for calls, a stream of angry conservatives screamed at me simply because they had a liberal available to scream at.

Many calls boiled down to, “You liberals are living in a dream world! The right to have a gun is in the constitution! Blah blah…Ted Nugent…blah blah.” I hadn’t said a single word about gun control in my conversation with Michael Medved, but that didn’t matter to the callers. Another listener referred to me as a “moonbat Bay Area leftist.”

All of this was a cakewalk compared to being a guest on the “most listened-to Christian radio show in Michigan," the Bob Dutko Show on WMUZ-The Light. Dutko refers to himself as “the fearless defender of the faith.” The other guest on the Bob Dutko Show the same day I was booked was a guy who claimed to have "scientific" proof that the Earth is only thousands of years old. As host Dutko quipped on air: This is a statement "which, by the way, scientifically, I agree with. Not just because the Bible says so, but that's what the science actually says. We're not going to deal with emotion, we're going to deal with fact and science!"

After the show's theme song, a Christian version of Tom Petty's “I Won't Back Down,” Dutko introduced me as a “flaming liberal,” already making an effort to get under my skin. It seemed Dutko only invited me on the show to be a liberal punching bag, without having read anything I’ve written. He used unrealistic, extreme comparisons to make his points, arguing against teaching schoolkids about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, and using that as a jumping-off point to explain why it is okay for Christians to shun gays. "You want a Hindu to be a good Hindu? Do you want Hindus to now start eating cows?” he asked. "If you respect other people having their beliefs, why not respect Christians having their beliefs as well?"

I slowly realized this was like talking to a guy who thinks Spider-Man really exists and can point to all the exact Marvel comic issues to back up his claim.

Another tactic the “fearless defender of the faith” used was to act as if the group he represents, no matter how massively powerful, is actually the poor victim of the opposition.

"Let me bring up something I consider to be one of the ultimate ironies in the liberal-versus-conservative debate," Dutko began. "That's the use of the word 'censorship.' It amazes me that liberals in this country will point their fingers at conservatives and accuse conservatives of being the book burners and the censors and the ones denying free speech."

He said evil liberals are censoring the voices of those who oppose homosexuality and support abstinence-only education and Intelligent Design theory in schools. "Those people are silenced!" Dutko exclaimed.

My response was, "Do we let Scientologists come into our schools and teach that we all evolved from volcanoes?"

His response: "Teaching that we all evolved from rock and sand, you don't think that's mythology? 'Cause that's what's being taught in our schools right now. We all evolved from rocks. Rocks and sand! Do you think that's mythology or do you think that's sound science?"

I learned that it shows weakness if the host gives in to any points of the opposition. Bob Dutko avoided this by being really patronizing while repeatedly cutting me off.

"Would Jesus want his message to be told through Christian black metal—the heaviest of heavy metal?" I asked, referring to one of my stories.

"I'm not a fan personally," Dutko replied.

"So would you not see the satire and irony and humor in that?" I ask.

"Weeeeelll, see now, I don't get the irony 'cause ..."

"What about Christian hardcore punk? Punk originated as anti-establishment, anti-religion. Now it's used to spread the word of Jesus. Would you find anything funny in that?"

"No!"

One thing Bob Dutko did find funny was the Promise Keepers, a non-profit Christian organization for men: "I've poked fun at Promise Keepers from time to time." Explanation: "Sometimes it gets around to guys in a circle of five crying on each other's shoulders. I've poked fun before, saying they turn into Promise Weepers. It’s not a good rally if somebody doesn't cry."

The final right-wing pundit tactic Bob Dutko used was to pose a large, extreme question in the last few seconds that couldn't possibly be answered articulately with time running out, thereby making the guest seem incompetent.

Sixty seconds left and Bob Dutko had an argumentative epiphany: "Why should the Promise Keepers be criticized for their supposed oppression of women when in Islam and throughout the Middle East women are treated far worse than anything the Promise Keepers do?"

He then asked: "Do you find it ironic that Promise Keepers is made out to be this anti-women group?"

Many hosts only invite you to their shows so you can be their liberal punching bag.

This past week I found myself at the headquarters of Fox News in midtown Manhattan. I wasn’t there as part of some post-Occupy Wall Street protest; I’d actually been invited to the studio to be a guest on Fox radio. This wasn’t one of those talking-head screaming matches where Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly try to rip the “crazy” liberal guest a new one. Instead, I was invited onto the Fox liberal oasis, the Alan Colmes Show. If you’re not familiar with Colmes, he was the non-Hannity portion of the long-running Fox show Hannity & Colmes. In a brilliant piece of “fair and balanced” casting, the skinny, nerdy-looking Colmes was pitted against squared-jaw Sean Hannity, both to act as his punching bag and to give the liberal perspective on news stories. Because he survived, I guess, they gave him his own radio show.

So last Monday, I trekked to the News Corp building on 46th Street and Sixth Avenue to talk about the state of hate in America and my experience infiltrating hate groups, including white supremacist organizations, the Westboro Baptist Church, and various anti-immigration groups. The show ended up going great. The guest host, Barry Weintraub, was very sympathetic and gave me this wonderful tagline about my work: “Telling tales of extreme hatred with a smile on his face.”

But that’s not always the case when you’re on right-wing radio. It usually ends with the host attacking you and placing the blame of all things liberal on your back. This forces you into the position of defending an entire cross-section of society, even if you’re really just there to promote a book or something. The first time I was on conservative radio, I was booked as a guest on the Michael Medved Show—the conduit for one of America’s top right-wing talk radio hosts. Medved, author of The Golden Turkey Awards, used to be a famous movie reviewer; then, somewhere along the line, he transformed into a staunch conservative and radio host.

Our rapport wasn’t nearly as bad as I feared. During commercial breaks I took the opportunity to question him on his statement that Plan 9 From Outer Space, according to The Golden Turkey Awards, was the worst movie of all time. We would chat cordially about movies, and once we were back on the air he’d take digs at me for not being conservative. But I kept it funny and lighthearted, and he seemed genuinely intrigued by some of the weird places I’ve infiltrated. But while Medved wasn’t so bad, his listeners were horrible. When he opened up the lines for calls, a stream of angry conservatives screamed at me simply because they had a liberal available to scream at.

Many calls boiled down to, “You liberals are living in a dream world! The right to have a gun is in the constitution! Blah blah…Ted Nugent…blah blah.” I hadn’t said a single word about gun control in my conversation with Michael Medved, but that didn’t matter to the callers. Another listener referred to me as a “moonbat Bay Area leftist.”

All of this was a cakewalk compared to being a guest on the “most listened-to Christian radio show in Michigan," the Bob Dutko Show on WMUZ-The Light. Dutko refers to himself as “the fearless defender of the faith.” The other guest on the Bob Dutko Show the same day I was booked was a guy who claimed to have "scientific" proof that the Earth is only thousands of years old. As host Dutko quipped on air: This is a statement "which, by the way, scientifically, I agree with. Not just because the Bible says so, but that's what the science actually says. We're not going to deal with emotion, we're going to deal with fact and science!"

After the show's theme song, a Christian version of Tom Petty's “I Won't Back Down,” Dutko introduced me as a “flaming liberal,” already making an effort to get under my skin. It seemed Dutko only invited me on the show to be a liberal punching bag, without having read anything I’ve written. He used unrealistic, extreme comparisons to make his points, arguing against teaching schoolkids about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, and using that as a jumping-off point to explain why it is okay for Christians to shun gays. "You want a Hindu to be a good Hindu? Do you want Hindus to now start eating cows?” he asked. "If you respect other people having their beliefs, why not respect Christians having their beliefs as well?"

I slowly realized this was like talking to a guy who thinks Spider-Man really exists and can point to all the exact Marvel comic issues to back up his claim.

Another tactic the “fearless defender of the faith” used was to act as if the group he represents, no matter how massively powerful, is actually the poor victim of the opposition.

"Let me bring up something I consider to be one of the ultimate ironies in the liberal-versus-conservative debate," Dutko began. "That's the use of the word 'censorship.' It amazes me that liberals in this country will point their fingers at conservatives and accuse conservatives of being the book burners and the censors and the ones denying free speech."

He said evil liberals are censoring the voices of those who oppose homosexuality and support abstinence-only education and Intelligent Design theory in schools. "Those people are silenced!" Dutko exclaimed.

My response was, "Do we let Scientologists come into our schools and teach that we all evolved from volcanoes?"

His response: "Teaching that we all evolved from rock and sand, you don't think that's mythology? 'Cause that's what's being taught in our schools right now. We all evolved from rocks. Rocks and sand! Do you think that's mythology or do you think that's sound science?"

I learned that it shows weakness if the host gives in to any points of the opposition. Bob Dutko avoided this by being really patronizing while repeatedly cutting me off.

"Would Jesus want his message to be told through Christian black metal—the heaviest of heavy metal?" I asked, referring to one of my stories.

"I'm not a fan personally," Dutko replied.

"So would you not see the satire and irony and humor in that?" I ask.

"Weeeeelll, see now, I don't get the irony 'cause ..."

"What about Christian hardcore punk? Punk originated as anti-establishment, anti-religion. Now it's used to spread the word of Jesus. Would you find anything funny in that?"

"No!"

One thing Bob Dutko did find funny was the Promise Keepers, a non-profit Christian organization for men: "I've poked fun at Promise Keepers from time to time." Explanation: "Sometimes it gets around to guys in a circle of five crying on each other's shoulders. I've poked fun before, saying they turn into Promise Weepers. It’s not a good rally if somebody doesn't cry."

The final right-wing pundit tactic Bob Dutko used was to pose a large, extreme question in the last few seconds that couldn't possibly be answered articulately with time running out, thereby making the guest seem incompetent.

Sixty seconds left and Bob Dutko had an argumentative epiphany: "Why should the Promise Keepers be criticized for their supposed oppression of women when in Islam and throughout the Middle East women are treated far worse than anything the Promise Keepers do?"

He then asked: "Do you find it ironic that Promise Keepers is made out to be this anti-women group?"

Toledo, OH — Police in Toledo will have a hard time building the trust of their citizens after a cellphone video showed one of their officers assaulting a handcuffed man.

“Police brutality captured at its finest,” said Brad Bollinger, the man who filmed this flagrant assault last week.

The man being punched in the face by the officer is 20-year-old Raymond Rober. Police were serving him with an arrest warrant, and he initially ran. However, he eventually stopped and allowed police to arrest him.

He was in handcuffs and cooperating with officers when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

“As he leans his head down, he’s adjusting the handcuffs on the back of him because they’re probably uncomfortable, and the lady officer strikes him in the side of the head,” says Bollinger. “It’s a coward move. It’s a thing of complete power. She knows that she has him, and he has nowhere to go, so she took complete advantage of it. It’s a sucker move.”

“It seems to me, based on the other officer’s conduct, he didn’t do something that justified being hit in any capacity,” Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, told ABC 13 News. “Certainly not while being handcuffed.”

After he had been punched in the face, Rober was then booked into Lucas County Jail on multiple charges, including resisting arrest.

Notice in the video below that not one of the officers around the man attempted to stop the other officer’s assault.

Police have not released the officer’s name and refuse to comment after they watched the video, stating only that the department has launched an investigation.

Toledo, OH — Police in Toledo will have a hard time building the trust of their citizens after a cellphone video showed one of their officers assaulting a handcuffed man.

“Police brutality captured at its finest,” said Brad Bollinger, the man who filmed this flagrant assault last week.

The man being punched in the face by the officer is 20-year-old Raymond Rober. Police were serving him with an arrest warrant, and he initially ran. However, he eventually stopped and allowed police to arrest him.

He was in handcuffs and cooperating with officers when out of nowhere, a female officer walks up to him and punches him.

“As he leans his head down, he’s adjusting the handcuffs on the back of him because they’re probably uncomfortable, and the lady officer strikes him in the side of the head,” says Bollinger. “It’s a coward move. It’s a thing of complete power. She knows that she has him, and he has nowhere to go, so she took complete advantage of it. It’s a sucker move.”

“It seems to me, based on the other officer’s conduct, he didn’t do something that justified being hit in any capacity,” Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University, told ABC 13 News. “Certainly not while being handcuffed.”

After he had been punched in the face, Rober was then booked into Lucas County Jail on multiple charges, including resisting arrest.

Notice in the video below that not one of the officers around the man attempted to stop the other officer’s assault.

Police have not released the officer’s name and refuse to comment after they watched the video, stating only that the department has launched an investigation.

The boom and bust in North Dakota has trapped people there, with little hope of work or escape.

WILLISTON, N.D.—From the looks of it, the nation’s boomtown is still booming. Big rigs, cement mixers and oil tankers still clog streets built for lighter loads. The air still smells like diesel fuel and looks like a dust bowl— all that traffic — and natural gas flares, wasted byproducts of the oil wells, still glare out at the night sky like bonfires.

Not to mention that Walmart, still the main game in town, can’t seem to get a handle on its very long lines and half­ empty shelves.

But life at the center of the country’s largest hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boom has definitely changed. The jobs that brought thousands of recession­-weary employment­-seekers to this once peaceful corner of western North Dakota over the last five years have been drying up, even as the unemployed keep coming.

Downtown, clutches of men pass their time at the Salvation Army, watching movies or trolling Craigslist ads on desktop computers. The main branch of the public library is full, all day, every day, with unemployed men in cubbyholes. And when the Command Center, a private temporary jobs agency, opens every morning at 6am, between two and three dozen people are waiting to get in the door.

Some of these job seekers are sleeping in their trucks, in utility sheds, behind piles of garbage by the railroad tracks, wherever they can curl up.

Only a year ago, Williston’s shale oil explosion was still gushing jobs. From 2010 to 2014, thanks to the Bakken shale oil patch, it was the fastest growing small city in the nation. Williston nearly tripled in size, from 12,000 to 35,000 people. But the number of active rigs used to drill new wells in the Bakken dropped to 111 in March, the lowest number since April 2010, according to state figures. Low oil prices have prompted drilling to slow down, and companies big and small have been laying off workers and cutting hours.

City officials paint a rosy picture. They cite North Dakota Job Service reports that maintain there are 116 jobs in Williston for every 100 residents, point to North Dakota’s ranking among oil­-producing states (number two, after Texas), call the oil production slowdown a blip and say the oil patch is still growing.

But the city’s job numbers do not match the reality on the ground. At the Command Center, oil jobs have dropped by 10 percent since last Fall, said Kyle Tennessen, the branch manager. Compounding the job shortage, laid-­off oil workers were competing with others for construction jobs and everything else, Tennessen added.

Some migrants have already left, or are planning to, according to the local U­Haul companies. They report fewer people renting vans and trucks to move into town and more laid­-off workers renting vehicles to move out.

The rest are becoming Williston’s version of day laborers. They compete for low­-paying jobs such as picking up trash, doing laundry and mopping floors, that make enough for them to eat, but not enough to afford a place to live. (The average one­-bedroom apartment in Williston costs $2,395 a month.)

Some live in one room with several other men, pooling resources and splitting costs. Others don’t know where they’ll sleep from one night to the next.

The Salvation Army has offered stranded workers a one­-way ticket back home. But many job seekers seem unwilling to leave—at least not until they can make a success out of their sacrificial move to a place with six months of winter, the worst traffic they’ve ever seen, and a disgruntled, if not miserable, populace.

“You just have to cowboy up and expect things to get better,” said Terry Ray Cover, a 56­-year-­old farmer and jack­-of-­all-­trades who came from southeast Iowa on a Greyhound bus in November. He’d heard North Dakota was raining jobs.

“They don’t tell you it’s all a lie,” he said, sipping coffee in the Salvation Army on a frigid day in early March. “Places advertise jobs and then tell you they’re not hiring.”

The jobs he sees ads for, Cover said, require certifications and degrees, “like engineering.” He had found odd jobs, one at a cattle ranch, since he arrived in Williston. But he hadn’t worked in four weeks, despite daily treks to the Command Center.

Cover, bundled in a ski suit, had spent the most frigid nights of winter (­20 Fahrenheit) in a tin shelter he discovered within walking distance of the Command Center, his best hope for work. He was relying on the Salvation Army for his daily bread and new friends for his daily smokes.

The men—they are all men—hanging out at the Salvation Army for coffee, bread and whatever donated goods there might be on a given day (from 9am to 3pm) have come from all over, including Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. They include a number of African immigrants originally from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

But their stories are close to the same. They heard Williston had jobs, and they weren’t having any luck back home. So they hopped in their truck, or a Greyhound bus, and hopped off to a rude awakening.

Most of the men, who range in age from their early 30s to late 50s, have spent 10 nights, the maximum allowed, at a 10­-bed emergency shelter the Salvation Army and a local church set up, leasing 10 beds at a camp for oil workers (a so-­called man camp). More than 100 men applied to stay at the emergency shelter since it resumed operating for the second year in November. (It was set to close March 31 but has extended its season due to demand.)

Although there is camaraderie among the migrants, they are openly frustrated, and the room where they hang out at the Salvation Army is often tense and gloomy. Men who have been sleeping outside in the elements, or trying to, fold themselves into corners to get real sleep. The African immigrants tend to hang together, but a lot of loners fill the room.

Ali Singa, who moved to North Dakota from Nashville nine months ago, started out in Fargo, making $11 an hour the day after he arrived in shipping. He stayed for three months before heading to Williston, where he heard he could make more money, enough to send to his wife and three children in Sierra Leone.

He found work in a nearby oil patch town, Watford City, hauling water, but he was laid off in December and has not been able to land another job. “A lack of a job has trapped me here,” Singa said. “Right now, I’m staying with friends. I’m in a very bad situation. You must put this down in your report: At the same time that they’re advertising jobs, they’re laying people off, and people keep coming and keep coming.”

Singa, a high school French teacher in his native country, moved to Washington, D.C. from the Sierra Leone 10 years ago, seeking a better life for his family back home. But after being laid off from a baggage handler job, he has not had much luck with his relocations.

“Had I stayed home I would’ve been better off by now,” he said. “But hope has kept me here, because hope is the poor man’s bread. Why can’t I get a job? I don’t have any felonies, no arrests. I am a good person. It’s the strangest thing. Is it because of the color of my skin? I tell people back home to not come here.”

Singa leaves to find work every morning at 5:30, and is usually the first one to arrive at the Command Center. But jobs are not doled out on a first­-come basis. They are handed out based on qualifications, and rankings workers have received from employers, Kyle Tennessen said. That works against the newest workers, without a hiring history.

On a recent typical morning, Tennessen doled out seven day jobs—restaurant work, construction site clean­up, maintenance­­—leaving 22 people who’d arrived before daybreak with no work for another day.

One of them happened to be a woman. Louise Provus, 50, moved from Spokane to Williston two years ago with her husband, Randy Fleming, 57. “For the first two years,” she said, “I had a job at the local dry cleaners. In April, I started working for a cleaning company as a domestic. But that’s just once a week now, so I’m still looking.”

Fleming, who lost an automotive shop in Spokane to fire, has been looking for work doing anything. But he has not landed a permanent job. “I’ve got like 40 applications out there,” he said. “I’ve been in here all week. And some days, I’ve been in here all day, just in case. We’ll come here at six and I’ll stay till two or three in the afternoon. Then I’ll take the heel­toe express home.”

He and his wife are among the luckier regulars at the Command Center. They found an apartment in subsidized senior housing for $600 a month. Even so, Provus said, they struggle to pay the rent. “I think I’ll go to the library after this and put in an application at Walmart,” she said.

Walmart has had the same sign out front advertising jobs at $17 an hour for three years, despite hiring freezes.

“I know it’s a long shot,” Provus said. “Make sure you tell people that if you get any job out here, no matter how bad, you’d better take it, because it’s the best you’re going to get.”

The boom and bust in North Dakota has trapped people there, with little hope of work or escape.

WILLISTON, N.D.—From the looks of it, the nation’s boomtown is still booming. Big rigs, cement mixers and oil tankers still clog streets built for lighter loads. The air still smells like diesel fuel and looks like a dust bowl— all that traffic — and natural gas flares, wasted byproducts of the oil wells, still glare out at the night sky like bonfires.

Not to mention that Walmart, still the main game in town, can’t seem to get a handle on its very long lines and half­ empty shelves.

But life at the center of the country’s largest hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, boom has definitely changed. The jobs that brought thousands of recession­-weary employment­-seekers to this once peaceful corner of western North Dakota over the last five years have been drying up, even as the unemployed keep coming.

Downtown, clutches of men pass their time at the Salvation Army, watching movies or trolling Craigslist ads on desktop computers. The main branch of the public library is full, all day, every day, with unemployed men in cubbyholes. And when the Command Center, a private temporary jobs agency, opens every morning at 6am, between two and three dozen people are waiting to get in the door.

Some of these job seekers are sleeping in their trucks, in utility sheds, behind piles of garbage by the railroad tracks, wherever they can curl up.

Only a year ago, Williston’s shale oil explosion was still gushing jobs. From 2010 to 2014, thanks to the Bakken shale oil patch, it was the fastest growing small city in the nation. Williston nearly tripled in size, from 12,000 to 35,000 people. But the number of active rigs used to drill new wells in the Bakken dropped to 111 in March, the lowest number since April 2010, according to state figures. Low oil prices have prompted drilling to slow down, and companies big and small have been laying off workers and cutting hours.

City officials paint a rosy picture. They cite North Dakota Job Service reports that maintain there are 116 jobs in Williston for every 100 residents, point to North Dakota’s ranking among oil­-producing states (number two, after Texas), call the oil production slowdown a blip and say the oil patch is still growing.

But the city’s job numbers do not match the reality on the ground. At the Command Center, oil jobs have dropped by 10 percent since last Fall, said Kyle Tennessen, the branch manager. Compounding the job shortage, laid-­off oil workers were competing with others for construction jobs and everything else, Tennessen added.

Some migrants have already left, or are planning to, according to the local U­Haul companies. They report fewer people renting vans and trucks to move into town and more laid­-off workers renting vehicles to move out.

The rest are becoming Williston’s version of day laborers. They compete for low­-paying jobs such as picking up trash, doing laundry and mopping floors, that make enough for them to eat, but not enough to afford a place to live. (The average one­-bedroom apartment in Williston costs $2,395 a month.)

Some live in one room with several other men, pooling resources and splitting costs. Others don’t know where they’ll sleep from one night to the next.

The Salvation Army has offered stranded workers a one­-way ticket back home. But many job seekers seem unwilling to leave—at least not until they can make a success out of their sacrificial move to a place with six months of winter, the worst traffic they’ve ever seen, and a disgruntled, if not miserable, populace.

“You just have to cowboy up and expect things to get better,” said Terry Ray Cover, a 56­-year-­old farmer and jack­-of-­all-­trades who came from southeast Iowa on a Greyhound bus in November. He’d heard North Dakota was raining jobs.

“They don’t tell you it’s all a lie,” he said, sipping coffee in the Salvation Army on a frigid day in early March. “Places advertise jobs and then tell you they’re not hiring.”

The jobs he sees ads for, Cover said, require certifications and degrees, “like engineering.” He had found odd jobs, one at a cattle ranch, since he arrived in Williston. But he hadn’t worked in four weeks, despite daily treks to the Command Center.

Cover, bundled in a ski suit, had spent the most frigid nights of winter (­20 Fahrenheit) in a tin shelter he discovered within walking distance of the Command Center, his best hope for work. He was relying on the Salvation Army for his daily bread and new friends for his daily smokes.

The men—they are all men—hanging out at the Salvation Army for coffee, bread and whatever donated goods there might be on a given day (from 9am to 3pm) have come from all over, including Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey and Washington, D.C. They include a number of African immigrants originally from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal.

But their stories are close to the same. They heard Williston had jobs, and they weren’t having any luck back home. So they hopped in their truck, or a Greyhound bus, and hopped off to a rude awakening.

Most of the men, who range in age from their early 30s to late 50s, have spent 10 nights, the maximum allowed, at a 10­-bed emergency shelter the Salvation Army and a local church set up, leasing 10 beds at a camp for oil workers (a so-­called man camp). More than 100 men applied to stay at the emergency shelter since it resumed operating for the second year in November. (It was set to close March 31 but has extended its season due to demand.)

Although there is camaraderie among the migrants, they are openly frustrated, and the room where they hang out at the Salvation Army is often tense and gloomy. Men who have been sleeping outside in the elements, or trying to, fold themselves into corners to get real sleep. The African immigrants tend to hang together, but a lot of loners fill the room.

Ali Singa, who moved to North Dakota from Nashville nine months ago, started out in Fargo, making $11 an hour the day after he arrived in shipping. He stayed for three months before heading to Williston, where he heard he could make more money, enough to send to his wife and three children in Sierra Leone.

He found work in a nearby oil patch town, Watford City, hauling water, but he was laid off in December and has not been able to land another job. “A lack of a job has trapped me here,” Singa said. “Right now, I’m staying with friends. I’m in a very bad situation. You must put this down in your report: At the same time that they’re advertising jobs, they’re laying people off, and people keep coming and keep coming.”

Singa, a high school French teacher in his native country, moved to Washington, D.C. from the Sierra Leone 10 years ago, seeking a better life for his family back home. But after being laid off from a baggage handler job, he has not had much luck with his relocations.

“Had I stayed home I would’ve been better off by now,” he said. “But hope has kept me here, because hope is the poor man’s bread. Why can’t I get a job? I don’t have any felonies, no arrests. I am a good person. It’s the strangest thing. Is it because of the color of my skin? I tell people back home to not come here.”

Singa leaves to find work every morning at 5:30, and is usually the first one to arrive at the Command Center. But jobs are not doled out on a first­-come basis. They are handed out based on qualifications, and rankings workers have received from employers, Kyle Tennessen said. That works against the newest workers, without a hiring history.

On a recent typical morning, Tennessen doled out seven day jobs—restaurant work, construction site clean­up, maintenance­­—leaving 22 people who’d arrived before daybreak with no work for another day.

One of them happened to be a woman. Louise Provus, 50, moved from Spokane to Williston two years ago with her husband, Randy Fleming, 57. “For the first two years,” she said, “I had a job at the local dry cleaners. In April, I started working for a cleaning company as a domestic. But that’s just once a week now, so I’m still looking.”

Fleming, who lost an automotive shop in Spokane to fire, has been looking for work doing anything. But he has not landed a permanent job. “I’ve got like 40 applications out there,” he said. “I’ve been in here all week. And some days, I’ve been in here all day, just in case. We’ll come here at six and I’ll stay till two or three in the afternoon. Then I’ll take the heel­toe express home.”

He and his wife are among the luckier regulars at the Command Center. They found an apartment in subsidized senior housing for $600 a month. Even so, Provus said, they struggle to pay the rent. “I think I’ll go to the library after this and put in an application at Walmart,” she said.

Walmart has had the same sign out front advertising jobs at $17 an hour for three years, despite hiring freezes.

“I know it’s a long shot,” Provus said. “Make sure you tell people that if you get any job out here, no matter how bad, you’d better take it, because it’s the best you’re going to get.”

And an Arizona Senator proposes a law requiring everyone to go to church.

1. Phil Robertson is a deeply disturbed man with a fantasy about beheading atheists.

Apparently, the version of Christianity that ‘Duck Dynasty’ patriarch Phil Robertson believes in is a very bloody, vengeful, sexually sadistic and psychopathic one.

Either that, or the dude is just insane.

The right-wing darling got off this week on spinning out a fantasy involving raping, decapitating and castrating an atheist family during a speech he gave at a Vero Beach Prayer Breakfast.

Amen.

“I’ll make a bet with you,” Robertson said in that aw shucks folksy way he has. “Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now is it dude?’”

Just a few points: first, he did not make good on that offer of making a bet. Second, decapitating her head off? Third, and yeah, sort of the most important. The definition of atheism is a little off. It’s not believing in God, Sir Duck Commander, not the inability to distinguish between right and wrong.

Robertson’s fantasy continued, we’re going to say, perversely. “Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.’”

Wait, who’s sick in the head?

2. Tucker Carlson and his brother Buckley are even worse than everyone thought.

Tucker and Buckley (yep, that’s his name) Carlson must have one proud mama. At least she can rest easy that she instilled in them a deep respect for women.

Ha!

In leaked emails from the nasty, smug conservative brother act to a female staffer for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio this week, Buckley referred to the woman as “Labiaface!”

Hey Buckley, do you talk to your mother with that mouth?

And no points for creativity either. There was a lot of mundane sexism in those emails tool, as well as sophomoric jokes about the woman’s name. The staffer, Amy Spitalnick, had simply reached out to to a writer for Tucker Carlson’s conservative website the Daily Caller asking for a correction to a story. Or as some might call it, doing her job. Things escalated and Tucker jumped in to tell her she was being whiny. Tucker and his brother then engaged in a little backchannel complaining about Spitalnick, accidentally cc-ing her on their e-mails.

Whoops.

Highlight: "Great response," Buckley wrote to Tucker. "Whiny little self-righteous bitch. Appalling? And with such an ironic name, too…Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don’t think so. More like LabiaFace."

Mama Carlson?

3. Arizona GOP State Senator just thinks church attendance should be mandatory.

While taking part in her state's appropriations debate this week, GOP Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen made a modest proposal: “Probably we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend the church of their choice.”

Probably, yeah.

Afterwards, reporters tried to get Allen to elaborate on that idea mashing up church and state. She scrambled away like a cornered animal. Then the next day, back on the state Senate floor, she doubled down, saying that she really did not understand why her suggestion that “America is in a need of a moral rebirth,” and that Americans be “legally required to go to church” was so controversial and “newsworthy.” Back in her day, people had morals and they prayed all the time, and she never even heard of heroin.

And that is why not going to church should be against the law.

Let us pray.

4. Mark Levin: Barack Obama should take his seat right next to Hitler.

On his show this week, rabid Conservative radio host Mark Levin initially wondered if he should really express what was in his heart. He wrestled with it, but not for long. Then he decided he just had to say it. It practically burst out of his mouth. “Barack Obama is the greatest threat that Jews face since the 1930’s.”

That’s it. That’s his position, and he’s sorry about having to say it. Wait, no he isn’t. He loved saying it. Barack Obama just loves “arming up this Islamonazis,” Levin said.

No one loves Nazis, of any kind, more than the country’s first black president.

Levin hastened to point out that he did not mean Obama threatens the Jews “in this country.” He meant the Jews in Israel. Although, he also thinks Obama is a terrible threat to this country, too. Practically goes without saying. So, in that sense, he's a threat to the Jews in this country, too.

]]>
Sat, 28 Mar 2015 12:56:00 -0700Janet Allon, AlterNet1033979 at http://www.alternet.orgTea Party and the RightTea Party and the Righttucker carlsonPhil Robertson

And an Arizona Senator proposes a law requiring everyone to go to church.

1. Phil Robertson is a deeply disturbed man with a fantasy about beheading atheists.

Apparently, the version of Christianity that ‘Duck Dynasty’ patriarch Phil Robertson believes in is a very bloody, vengeful, sexually sadistic and psychopathic one.

Either that, or the dude is just insane.

The right-wing darling got off this week on spinning out a fantasy involving raping, decapitating and castrating an atheist family during a speech he gave at a Vero Beach Prayer Breakfast.

Amen.

“I’ll make a bet with you,” Robertson said in that aw shucks folksy way he has. “Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now is it dude?’”

Just a few points: first, he did not make good on that offer of making a bet. Second, decapitating her head off? Third, and yeah, sort of the most important. The definition of atheism is a little off. It’s not believing in God, Sir Duck Commander, not the inability to distinguish between right and wrong.

Robertson’s fantasy continued, we’re going to say, perversely. “Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.’”

Wait, who’s sick in the head?

2. Tucker Carlson and his brother Buckley are even worse than everyone thought.

Tucker and Buckley (yep, that’s his name) Carlson must have one proud mama. At least she can rest easy that she instilled in them a deep respect for women.

Ha!

In leaked emails from the nasty, smug conservative brother act to a female staffer for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio this week, Buckley referred to the woman as “Labiaface!”

Hey Buckley, do you talk to your mother with that mouth?

And no points for creativity either. There was a lot of mundane sexism in those emails tool, as well as sophomoric jokes about the woman’s name. The staffer, Amy Spitalnick, had simply reached out to to a writer for Tucker Carlson’s conservative website the Daily Caller asking for a correction to a story. Or as some might call it, doing her job. Things escalated and Tucker jumped in to tell her she was being whiny. Tucker and his brother then engaged in a little backchannel complaining about Spitalnick, accidentally cc-ing her on their e-mails.

Whoops.

Highlight: "Great response," Buckley wrote to Tucker. "Whiny little self-righteous bitch. Appalling? And with such an ironic name, too…Spitalnick? Ironic because you just know she has extreme dick-fright; no chance has this girl ever had a pearl necklace. Spoogeneck? I don’t think so. More like LabiaFace."

Mama Carlson?

3. Arizona GOP State Senator just thinks church attendance should be mandatory.

While taking part in her state's appropriations debate this week, GOP Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen made a modest proposal: “Probably we should be debating a bill requiring every American to attend the church of their choice.”

Probably, yeah.

Afterwards, reporters tried to get Allen to elaborate on that idea mashing up church and state. She scrambled away like a cornered animal. Then the next day, back on the state Senate floor, she doubled down, saying that she really did not understand why her suggestion that “America is in a need of a moral rebirth,” and that Americans be “legally required to go to church” was so controversial and “newsworthy.” Back in her day, people had morals and they prayed all the time, and she never even heard of heroin.

And that is why not going to church should be against the law.

Let us pray.

4. Mark Levin: Barack Obama should take his seat right next to Hitler.

On his show this week, rabid Conservative radio host Mark Levin initially wondered if he should really express what was in his heart. He wrestled with it, but not for long. Then he decided he just had to say it. It practically burst out of his mouth. “Barack Obama is the greatest threat that Jews face since the 1930’s.”

That’s it. That’s his position, and he’s sorry about having to say it. Wait, no he isn’t. He loved saying it. Barack Obama just loves “arming up this Islamonazis,” Levin said.

No one loves Nazis, of any kind, more than the country’s first black president.

Levin hastened to point out that he did not mean Obama threatens the Jews “in this country.” He meant the Jews in Israel. Although, he also thinks Obama is a terrible threat to this country, too. Practically goes without saying. So, in that sense, he's a threat to the Jews in this country, too.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/why-gay-man-me-going-make-it-hard-indiana-shopkeepers-exercise-their-religiousWhy a Gay Man Like Me Is Going to Make It Hard for Indiana Shopkeepers to Exercise Their 'Religious Liberty' http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/87828299/0/alternet~Why-a-Gay-Man-Like-Me-Is-Going-to-Make-It-Hard-for-Indiana-Shopkeepers-to-Exercise-Their-Religious-Liberty

Am I responsible for their damnation if I let'em serve me without mentioning that I'm gay and they don't guess it?

The following is not snark. It's an honest and practical inquiry: How will merchants in Indiana determine which customers can now be refused service under the state's new "religious liberty" law?

Take sexual identity. If every LGBT person out there were a flamboyant drag queen, it might be easier for a merchant to decide who to refuse. But some gay people, like me, are just average white guys -- I don't swish, lisp or call everyone "honey," and if there's a song on my lips, it's more likely Jerry Garcia than Judy Garland.

What's a God-fearing Indiana merchant to do if I walk in the door? Am I responsible for his damnation if I let him serve me without mentioning that I'm gay and he doesn't guess it? Must he ask all customers about potential offenses to his faith?

Complicating things is the fact that some straight men are a bit effete and some straight women are kind of butch. Just because God made them like that doesn't mean their dry cleaning should get turned away.

So, perhaps Indiana now needs a law requiring I.D. cards for all citizens -- yellow for the hets, pink for the homos -- to protect both the souls and the profits of faith-full, freedom-loving Chamber of Commerce members. Or maybe gays should be required to tattoo their foreheads for quick identification. If so, the same should go for straight people who practice oral and anal sex, since what offends some religious beliefs is "sodomy" defined more broadly, not merely loving someone of the same gender.

What about Jews? Some conservative Christians believe God does not hear the prayers of a Jew. If He can discriminate that way, why can't a car salesman refuse to sell a Chevy? And what about adulterers? Indiana's new law is so broad, it clearly protects the freedom to deny service to adulterers if that offends sincerely held religious beliefs. If so, and there's going to be some sort of I.D. system adopted, it could incorporate a scarlet "A."

If the tattoo system isn't workable for some reason, or a more discreet I.D. card system isn't implemented, it raises the question: Now that the Indiana legal system permits merchants to discriminate between customers, what will the state do to protect those people wrongly denied service?

It can't be long before we see a case in the Indiana Supreme Court in which a heterosexual plaintiff claims his rights were infringed because a baker, believing the plaintiff a queen ordering a birthday cake for his boyfriend, denied the plaintiff service. How will the plaintiff prove his heterosexuality? And what claim will the defendant make as the basis for his determination that the plaintiff was gay: "When a Britney Spears song came on the radio, Plaintiff rolled his eyes and muttered, 'Leave… Britney... ALONE!'" Or if the discrimination wasn't based on being gay, imagine the baker saying, "Well, he LOOKS Jewish, and the Jews murdered Jesus, so… " How would the Indiana Supremes sort that one out?

When hate, bigotry and fear-based divisiveness drive public policy, this sort of ludicrousness is predictable. It might be funny if it weren't so offensive to the basic values of fairness, tolerance and genuine freedom for which this nation, at its best, is supposed to stand.

Am I responsible for their damnation if I let'em serve me without mentioning that I'm gay and they don't guess it?

The following is not snark. It's an honest and practical inquiry: How will merchants in Indiana determine which customers can now be refused service under the state's new "religious liberty" law?

Take sexual identity. If every LGBT person out there were a flamboyant drag queen, it might be easier for a merchant to decide who to refuse. But some gay people, like me, are just average white guys -- I don't swish, lisp or call everyone "honey," and if there's a song on my lips, it's more likely Jerry Garcia than Judy Garland.

What's a God-fearing Indiana merchant to do if I walk in the door? Am I responsible for his damnation if I let him serve me without mentioning that I'm gay and he doesn't guess it? Must he ask all customers about potential offenses to his faith?

Complicating things is the fact that some straight men are a bit effete and some straight women are kind of butch. Just because God made them like that doesn't mean their dry cleaning should get turned away.

So, perhaps Indiana now needs a law requiring I.D. cards for all citizens -- yellow for the hets, pink for the homos -- to protect both the souls and the profits of faith-full, freedom-loving Chamber of Commerce members. Or maybe gays should be required to tattoo their foreheads for quick identification. If so, the same should go for straight people who practice oral and anal sex, since what offends some religious beliefs is "sodomy" defined more broadly, not merely loving someone of the same gender.

What about Jews? Some conservative Christians believe God does not hear the prayers of a Jew. If He can discriminate that way, why can't a car salesman refuse to sell a Chevy? And what about adulterers? Indiana's new law is so broad, it clearly protects the freedom to deny service to adulterers if that offends sincerely held religious beliefs. If so, and there's going to be some sort of I.D. system adopted, it could incorporate a scarlet "A."

If the tattoo system isn't workable for some reason, or a more discreet I.D. card system isn't implemented, it raises the question: Now that the Indiana legal system permits merchants to discriminate between customers, what will the state do to protect those people wrongly denied service?

It can't be long before we see a case in the Indiana Supreme Court in which a heterosexual plaintiff claims his rights were infringed because a baker, believing the plaintiff a queen ordering a birthday cake for his boyfriend, denied the plaintiff service. How will the plaintiff prove his heterosexuality? And what claim will the defendant make as the basis for his determination that the plaintiff was gay: "When a Britney Spears song came on the radio, Plaintiff rolled his eyes and muttered, 'Leave… Britney... ALONE!'" Or if the discrimination wasn't based on being gay, imagine the baker saying, "Well, he LOOKS Jewish, and the Jews murdered Jesus, so… " How would the Indiana Supremes sort that one out?

When hate, bigotry and fear-based divisiveness drive public policy, this sort of ludicrousness is predictable. It might be funny if it weren't so offensive to the basic values of fairness, tolerance and genuine freedom for which this nation, at its best, is supposed to stand.